The Debate about Social Software

Roland Piquepaille writes "Is "social software" the new overhyped buzzword? In an article for the Guardian, Jack Schofield says yes. On the contrary, in Historical Roots of Social Software, Howard Rheingold offers insights about this new phenomenon. And in this Tech Central Station article, Arnold Kling agrees with Rheingold. He thinks that social software is likely to the basis of what could be the next "killer app." Kling says that with social software, the interaction is no longer between you and your computer, but between the groups you belong to and networks of computers. In order to explain the issues, King studies three types of problems that this new kind of software might solve: the matching problem, the issue-resolution problem, and the classroom-management problem. So, is social software hype or reality?"

Not new.

Anyone remember "Have my fax call your fax--we'll do lunch?"

Seriously, since computers have taken over many of the roles previously reserved for personal assistants, such as arranging meetings, et al, it only makes sense that they would start to become robotic facilitators of social interaction.

Part Hype...part reality

The concept behind social softwareis very legitimate...But its also becoming one of those buzzwords like 'realtime' or 'high preformance computing' The definition of realtime is to place a deadline on a proccess...and kill it if it has not completed by that time....and high preformance computing is the structuring of algorithims to crunch numbers faster

Yet Microsoft says windows XP does both.

If you ever needed more proof that these are no more than overused buzzwords...thats it!

Similarly, social software is a very real concept, but it just seems to have one of those sexy...media friendly names....every time i turn around now i hear a devloper talking about the next generation of 'social software'. Please.... its not some magical philosiphy that software devlopers are using to better society...we do what makes money...hence our software follows social trends....boom...social software

To be a real social software

It must have ChattingAndDrinkingAtAPub.

Six degrees

In the labor market, the problem is to match hiring managers with qualified workers. When you need something fixed, the problem is to match your dented fender or stopped-up toilet with the appropriate repair person.

These problems have already been solved in several formats. Think MP3. Someone wants a track, and they are connected with someone who has that track.

One format is websites. This is especially true for topics such as employment and dating where an "offerer" is connected with the "needer".

With my previous example of MP3s there the possibility of having a P2P referer network. Each person posts their "resume" of talents / interests, and then is refered through their friends lists to friends of friends searching for that interest. Six degrees of seperation stuff that is backed by the trust you have in your group of friends.

When I started this post it was just an unusual thought, but the more I think about it, the more logical this seems. I reserve all rights to this idea ;) ___
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Wow!

So you mean that the someone is going to invent a MUD [mudconnect.com]? I can't wait!

Visualization

We've been working on combining the social software idea and visualization to build CRM-type tools. http://www.bigattichouse.com/peoplelinking/ [bigattichouse.com]

Keys

What seems off to me about these filtering and pattern matching programs is the vague key values. Like genre recognition software for managing movies, where do you put your stops, what do you filter on? When you're looking for directions, you have a simple weighted graph traversal, the data is mainly empirical. But when you're looking for a plumber, what're the key values and who puts them in for each entry?

Such software has one primary fault as it's basis

Such software fundementaly screws with baseline criteria. You end up hireing a plumber, not because he's a good plumber, but because he's got a good score on the *personality* test. In the begining it looks kind of nice to be able to aquire groups of people that you'll "get along with" for all your needs... but this is the real world and things don't quite work that way.
And for it to do so, it requires people to be honest about their profiles (much less it requires them to provide them) and that just isn't going to happen... we value our freedom of privacy, and all the really practical apps of this would require us to give up a great deal of it.

Irony

Am I the only one who finds the term "social software" terribly ironic, considering the social skills of the people who write software? :-)

Re:Irony

Social skills are defined by what society you're part of. The well-dressed, smooth-talking types who are usually what we think of as "socially skilled" are just as out of place among a bunch of geeks as geeks are in other settings.

I don't agree that being comfortable in geek company makes you socially skilled. Socially skilled people are those who can get along very well with a random person. $RANDOM_JOE is far more likely to be a non-geek than a geek.

"It's okay to get some exercise, take a shower, and put on clean clothes!"

None of which has much to do with social skills. We're talking about how easily you interact with other people. Take me for instance: I do all the things you mentioned. Heck, I even have pointy hair. However, I have great difficulty behaving in society as I'm expected to. I find most social mores to be ridiculous. See the link in my sig, it starts with: "If you're the kind of person that hates being invited to parties...". And I mean it. I think lack of social skills is a rather fundamental trait/problem, one that can't be overcome just by being a little less lazy. From my limited observation, being socially skilled involves things like "small talk", and smiling like a retard every once in a while, things which I abhor. I often find myself forgetting what's the thing to say when someone says thank you. And if you accost me and ask me a question, particularly when I'm coding, I might look at your face and stare blankly for 15 seconds while I disentangle my train of thought, which you might find unnerving. And I would get totally frustrated if someone I'm waiting for spends half an hour primping themself. So you see, my social skills are pathetic. I'm sure other geeks also share some of these traits. And its not something you can change without giving up a fundamental part of what you are.

Social software?!

RMS gotta be behind this...

Hmmn. Not sure about that...

It might just be me but for each of the problem types mentioned the article seems to be saying that the "killer app" which solves this problem will take the human factor out of the equation (not completely but close).

Maybe my problem is that I don't think social applications will be the next killer app. If you think back then most of the applications (or genres of applications) which have made it big have come about due to new technologies or by making existing applications more convenient in some way.

Examples from the article: Word processing apps (upgrade from typewriters - introduction of computer technology made this an almost inevitable step), spreadsheet programs (upgrade from, well, handwritten spreadsheets - again computer tech introduction), e-mail and web-browsing (not needed until the internet became a mass population creation rather than an academic or BBS thing).

My point being that none of the examples cited are social software based so why should the next killer app be? Not that I don't see social software coming up with something useful to a subset of people in the same way that modern programming suites (convenient drag and drop features and comprehensive debugging systems and code optimisation in comparison to simple text editor and command line compiling) are useful to programmers. But a necessary app for the entire computer user base? I find it more likely that anything that large will require a new technology development.

Could be wrong though...

average slashdot reader dream

so can social software help a desperate slashdot reader get laid any time soon?

Social Software?

Hype or reality? Total hype. I mean why would people want to use software to say, "post their ideas" on a "shared forum". Totally ludicrous.

The Killer App

Why is everybody looking for the Killer App just like the Gold Rush? IPv6 is supposed to be a Killer App and yet it's not an App at all, and nobody wants to implement it because they have existing IPv4 and NAT with internal 10Gig Eth backbone.

Come on, seriously, is there going to be a Killer App that is going to make Silicon Valley explode and get convicted murderers with zero experience jobs as C++ software engineers?

Overhyped...

In my opinion, "Social software" has already met its peak. I can stream any sort of dataset i have (video, audio, text, software, etc.) to anyone with a computer. P2P technology even opened up the door to communicate this information with people I don't know, and generate lists of contacts who require or provide similar information. At least technologically speaking, we have all the social software we're ever going to need.

I think the issue at hand is more psychological than technical. Social psychology revolves around a single issue: reproduction. The fact of the matter is, if we don't meet people we can't reproduce to pass our genes onto a new generation. This functional property of social interaction can't be replaced by software. No system of statistical compatibility will ever be able to tell you when you're in "love," nor will the Sims Online ever teach how to cope with living with other individuals. The only way to learn these kinds of behaviors is to interact with other human beings.

However, I do admit that social simulation can prodive a useful tool for computing. In particular, some areas of artificial intelligence deal with search spaces of unthinkable complexity and distributed computing (i.e. seti@home) allows many computers to work on the same problem at the same time. Which is exactly what humanity has been doing for ages.

I predict that social software, and even social psychology, will under go a massive revolution once the Turing test can no longer distinguish man from machine. ALICE [alicebot.org] has successfully fooled some old friends, but only because they thought it was just me "messing" with them, which I tend to do on occasion.

FYI, I'm finishing up my last year in college, with a BS in Math and a BA in Psychology.

My original column had much more comments

In this column [weblogs.com], I was just not giving the references to the three articles mentioned in this Slashdot story, but also I gave more comments on each story. Read it by yourself. Roland Piquepaille. Website: http://primidi.com/ Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends: http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/

actually

I was thinking that killer app was an overhyped buzzword.

we already have the next killer app

--the next "killer app" is here, the deal is, it's not a singularity any longer, like when it was 'visicalc" or "lotus i-2-3". The "app" is that now computers are universal, and with sharing and P2P, this "the people", the "sociality" aspect is the app, because now we can combine all the other singularity apps into "one". It's the COMBINATION that is the killer app, the tool is the ACCUMULATION and adoption of the previously built tools. Stores and business? We have ebay, anyone can be a store now, and we can already manage, file, graph, plot, utter, whatever bits of human data we need to, any new advances will just be variations on those themes, nothing really "new". We hit it already, that "car" has been invented and is on the road, with the only thing chaning is paint and engine advances whatever. News? Large news organizations are beoming redundant, because anyone so inclined can be a reporter and "broadcaster' or "publisher", you can-and we do- get "news" instantly from around the planet, increasingly from just people reporting what they are seeing outside, bypassing the old news orgs. Entertainment? What used to take a troupe or a band can now be created by a single individual, then shared, copied, distributed. And because of storage, anything can be archived, modified, sold, given away, rented-whatever floats your boat. Education? All the homeschoolers I know use computers and the internet, they don't NEED massive government expenditures and brick and mortar buildings and daily two way commutes and yearly property tax increases, and frankly, seem to be doing an admirable job of it. And it has happened with higher education, and will most likely become more and more common.

The biggest problem (my list here is obviously just an opinion) will be the frantic machinations of older style monopolies to hang on to what they have, but still be "the big dogs", both government and busy-ness. What we own, what we can do with it. They are trying now with legislation, restrictions, etc. In fact I'd say they are going out of their way to create artifical problems, just because the "new" way of doing things is a direct threat to their buggy whip notions of what "stuff" should be as it relates to "society".

The second tier problems are the struggle between anonymity and building online trust, as anyone who has used any chat or forums for any length of time can tell you, you have NO idea who you are speaking with at any time. The old style of "only" face to face that had that instant verification got replaced with various communications advances, where at one time say you needed face to face where visual and auditory combined to help you discern reality, now you have to trust electronics which may or may not be "real". Using one to verify the other as indicated in the articles is a great way to do this, but we are still somewhat constreained, even with distance travelling being so much easier now than even 100 years ago.

Third tier is just "security" in general, whereas we used to rely on stout construction, door locks and the old 12 bore in the corner to make sure we were "safe", now you must devle into the arcane world of bits and bytes and packets which may be "spoofed" or "intercepted" or otherwise and are the newest in sociopathic maladjustment, ie, criminality.

Anyone else...

And in this Tech Central Station article, Arnold Kling agrees with Rheingold.

Did anyone else read that as Arnold Klingon? You're needed in Oregon ASAP, Mr. Klingon!

Microsoft did the opposite of this before...

Remember Windows 3.0 GPFs? The ones where it says the system is basically screwed, you lost your work and force you to click "OK?"

I bet that set the bar for antisocial software.

Scared me for a minute!

I thought Bob and Clip-It were coming back. Damn you, Microsoft!

Interesting Social Software for San Francisco

A project to build community and facilitate information sharing in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's a free access point to a distributed library of people's books, videos, and other media. Share with your community, meet your neighbors, find the books you've always wanted, and never pay for video rentals again:

http://www.communitybooks.org [communitybooks.org]

Doh.

Years ago, people were asking what would be the killer app or game for girls/women.

Doh, they already had it - chat software.

With all the buzzwords being thrown about, and the various agendas, I think they may forget one important point. The software has to "GET OUT OF THE WAY" and let em chat. Not saying it does nothing or little, after all there's plenty of technology in a cellphone.

gotta love geeks

Seriously, if I tell my non-Geek friends about "social software" they'd probably look at me blankly as they try and figure out what ELSE you could possibly do on the internet with a computer besides chat with other people, buy stuff on eBay, exchange emails and pictures, etc. To them the computer is a FACILITATOR.

It's like the geeks just discovered that information-based machines can, *gasp*, be used to exchange information with OTHER PEOPLE and not just computer programs running on other machines.

Welcome to the party.. people have been forming social groups for years, whether it's at church, or over the telephone, or pen-pals, or now blogs and chat rooms and message boards and collab software.

So I'll just toss this one squarely in the "hype bucket".

Social Software

Social Software? Isn't that what "Microsoft Bob" [toastytech.com] was supposed to be?

'Nuff said....

The Beauty of Social Software is...

The beauty of social software is that it opens up a whole new class of people I can say to: "Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script."

Just imagine it: half the managers and all of HR: whoosh! evaporating into a cloud of their own useless chatter, while they themselves are replaced by bots.

What a wonderful world it would be.

Free mal vu ! [attrition.org].

Journalism and Advertising not that different

especially these days its all about selling the same old soap as something new. Damn. They were into recycling before anyone.

"Killer app?"

Isn't a "killer app" just a database of serial killers? In which case, shouldn't it be antisocial software?

I take things that Jack Schofield writes with a...

...pinch of salt.
He has recently written both that Ogg Vorbis isn't yet good enough to be used for encoding music, and that the English Al-Jazeera site is running IIS on Linux. Those, and other small things, make me read through things he writes carefully.

Limitations of computer systems

Kling says that with social software, the interaction is no longer between you and your computer, but between the groups you belong to and networks of computers. ... So, is social software hype or reality?

I used to work with a company that did a lot of acquiring of small and mid-sized manufacturing companies. Some of the initial tasks upon acquisition: shut down all e-mail systems. Terminate all large-scale "ERP" or "business management" software and replace with simple inventory and bookkeeping systems. Close all stand-along headquarters locations and move personnel to closest factory. Demolish all walls in office spaces and move desks to central "pen". Move office personnel into open locations in the middle of the factory floor. Prohibit all use of studies, whitepapers, and Powerpoints, and 98% of all memos. In some cases they took out fax machines. Require all personnel to talk to everyone they did business with 4 times per day, either in person or on the phone.

After taking these actions, the typical acquired company would see a doubling of productivity and a tripling of profitability in 18 months.

So I guess I have to say I am a bit skeptical of "social software" in any kind of business setting. Blogs are fun to read in the evening for one's personal enjoyment, but turning the business day into a blogging session doesn't seem to me to have much promise.

sPh

Social Software?

Sociologist: "Do you want to comment social software?" Geek: "Social? What that?" Sociologist: "Like interacting with people." Geek: "Me not interact. Me not see people." Sociologist: "Well, anyhow, what do you think about social software?" Geek: "Me not social. Me want software not social." Sociologist: "Never mind..."

So...what is it?

I know I'm supposed to click through and read the articles, yada yada, but I feel that there should be a sentence in there, maybe in place of one of the "it's the next revolution" ones, telling us roughly what "social software" is supposed to mean. Forgive me for not being up on my buzzwords, but this is a new one to me. I'm reminded of the book review that kept talking about "The Singularity" assuming we knew that meant the time when machines become more intelligent than humans, and I just assumed it was talking about a black hole. Well, "social software" sounds to me like what you'd call aim and irc.

Re:Already slashdotted, article here:

elint@maureen:~/$ diff troll.txt original.txt
> ... about Trinity dying in matrix 2 ...

Wow, you're sick. Was that really worth it? I need mod points again :P

--elint
"There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more." --Woody Allen

Re:interesting social Wi-Fi networking software

Neat idea...