Coming To Terms With Sociality
Thomas Vander Wal
Presented to: designtalks DC
Falls Church,VA, USA :: 29 February 2008

What is Social
Software?

Services...

People...

Desires...

Interests...

Wants...

Needs...

Sharing...

But essentially

it is all about

My friends

My interests

My sharing

and following.

It is being

We select services…

Where our friends are

Where we can interact

Business calls it collaboration

or knowledge sharing

we know it as

communicating.

Sharing and being social
is how we humans got
out of caves

Being social is how we
advance as a society

We have a lot of information

Many layers of information

We need tools for understanding

We share:
Things found
People
Events
Things created
Links
Preference
Status/presence
Media

Cure technology pain

Technology Pain:
Syncing Refinding
Taste
Precision
Ease of use
Portability
Privacy Attention

Social Software:
Tools and Services

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking:
Links Found things
Have: Identity
Tags
Comments
Ease of use
Solve: Portability
Taste Attention

Tagging &
Other Features

Tagging
Derived Value
Abstracts
Identity
Favorites Long Text Annotation
Titles
Ratings
Work Contributing

The “F” Word

Folksonomy

Folksonomy Definition
❖ Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of pages
and objects for one's own retrieval
❖ The tagging is usually done in a social environment (shared
and open to others)
❖ The act of tagging is done by the person consuming the
information

Self & Others
Refind links annotated in your understanding
Others with similar understanding
and interest find info
Connect and collaborate with
people with similar interests
Access your info from any browser

Getting to Real
Relationships

Spheres of Sociality
Mob
Collective
Selective
Personal

Directional Sociality

Not All
Relationships
Are Equal

Unequal Access
Public
Private

Approaching
Real Relationships
Share Share
Listen
Public Private
Friend A X X
Friend B X X X
Friend C X X
Acquaintance A X X
Acquaintance B X

Granular Listening

Reputation Relationships
Conversation
Groups
Sharing
Identity Object
Collaboration
Actions
Presence

Differing Perspectives
InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. - 2008

Faces of Perception

Personal

Collective

Collaborative

Newbie

Service Owner

External Developer

Depth of Perception

Non-user

Non-contributing Collective User

Non-contributing Selective User

Light Contributing User

Heavy Contributing User

Matrix of Perceptions

We have come so far...

But still
have so
much
work to
do!

Thank you!

URL: http://infocloudsolutions.com
E-mail: thomas@infocloudsolutions.com
E-mail: thomas@vanderwal.net
AIM: vanderwal
Skype: tjvanderwal
InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. - 2008