Social Architecture: Modeling the Next Generation
Sean Madden
Webvisions 2007, Portland OR

Social networks have
revolutionized the way people
think about software, from both
the business and consumer
perspective
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Passion Centric
vs.
Passion Agnostic
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

I Love @#&!
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Shaun the Stylist
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

The Social Software Toolbox
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Tagging
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Tagging is reinventing information architecture
as we know it
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Tags create a highly-malleable cataloguing system
Tags communicate “meta data” to the masses
Tags are easy
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Voting
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

“... I suspect in a matter of a few years a Web
page without a dynamic ratings system attached
will trigger the same response that a Web page
without hyperlinks triggers today”
Stephen B. Johnson Emergence
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

People understand voting
Voting promotes trust and believability
Voting enables the community to decide what it
feels is important
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Extension
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Extension empowers your users
Extension increases stickiness
Extension establishes credibility and exhibits
confidence
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Customization
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Customization in the social space represents an
entirely new software paradigm
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Customization allows for self-expression
Customization increases sense of ownership
Customization is a di erentiator
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

All of these combine to form what are being
called
self-organizing systems
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Purposeful Self-Organization
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Tagging is a conscious choice, it is work
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Voting pushes towards the mean,
it does not organize
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

In its current state, customization is too manual
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Ironically, these tools detract from the primary
goals of our systems
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

The next generation of social systems should
organize information without inhibiting the acts
of creating and consuming
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Ubiquitous Computing
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Ubiquitous computing is a model of computing
in which computer functions are integrated into
everyday life, often in an invisible way
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

It is not only inevitable, it is already here
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Mobile Phones
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QR Codes
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Locality
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Aside from designing directly for it, we can learn
from its basic principles
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Calm Technology
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Beautiful Seams
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

A point of presence becomes a field of presence
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Enabling our networks to leverage ubiquitous
computing will reduce the cognitive load required
to achieve the desired task
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Emergence
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

An emergent system is one of great complexity
that is created without oversight from a “master
designer” and comes about through agents
following their own set of simple, local rules
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Ants
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

More is di erent
Ignorance is useful
Encourage random encounters
Look for patterns
Pay attention to your neighbors
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Truly emergent organization can be hard to pin to
human behavior
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

But we can start working towards it
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Newsvine Groups
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Pattern Matching / Behavior Recognition
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The Genetic Algorithm
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

The outer boundaries of today’s systems are
defined by our own intellectual limitations
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Release the prioritization / creation of our back-
end systems to the community in the same
manner as we have released our IA through
tagging
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Create a base set of rules and let the community
grow /cultivate them through use
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

A crowd is at its wisest when it is:
Diverse, Independent,
Decentralized, and Aggregated
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Purposeful Self-Organization becomes...
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Emergent Organization
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

It’s already here in some capacity
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

An emergent system is a less bounded system
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

It is time to take the next step forward and stop
putting the hard problems o to another day
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Social Networks have limitless potential, but we
need to work towards designing them that way
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007

Acknowledgments
Special Thanks To
Jasmyn Madden, Nick Finck, Valerie Casey, Je Veen,
Tom Watson, Jina Bolton, Mykola Bilokonsky
Photo Credits
http://flickr.com/photos/74833619@N00/93440933/
http://flickr.com/photos/boogah/151536846/
http://flickr.com/photos/damgaard/449566520/
http://flickr.com/photos/add/187811645/
http://flickr.com/photos/catskillsgrrl/99502267/
http://flickr.com/photos/whateverthing/128106986/
Webvisions 2007 Social Architecture May 3rd, 2007