Jan Schmidt: Rules, Relations and Code as three dimensions to look at social software:

Am I missing anything?
What role does gender play?

  • Rules: context is important
  • Relationships: virtual vs. personal relations. Community
  • Code: intention of purpose of why people are participating
  • e.g. a knitting blog.

Are there gender-specific pratices of social software? (Jan Schmidt)

  • Probably
  • Yes
  • No
  • As soical software only reflects the communication behavior of the “real world”, yes! (content, creativity, topics)
  • Totally. But it’s totally easy to slip into stereotypes and clichés. Of course cultural context of gender issues will show in blogs.
  • Yes, definately. The use is different
  • Yes, there is a big generation gab based on notions of private and public (relates to the idea of context in danah boyd’s talk)
  • Caused by (a)Designers, (b) Users, © Marketeers?
  • Aim, age and social status are maybe more important … ?
  • Yes - women are more concerned about identity/security/anonymity issues.
  • Are there age-specific practices of social software?
  • Are there national specific practices of social software? German speaking countries have more respect for data privacy.

What innovations in the design process will better support the emergence of systems? (Danah Boyd)

  • Agile development
  • the Death of Java!! :)
  • is the possible decontextualization meme an opportunity or a problem?

What new types of navigating sociality wiil we need and what will be the implications on society and culture? (Danah Boyd)

  • What IS social navigation?
  • I think that social networks will inevitably split or disintegrate if they become too large or people start feeling ‘lost’ as an individual among too many others. so to what extend is this really necessary?

How to scale social software without killing communities? (Danah Boyd)

  • Scale is not the issue. E.g.: deviant ART, many groups → huge community. → So what is the issue?
  • Let people group themselves! - Careful moderation by peers & moderator
  • Why not allow sub-groups?
  • Do they have to?
  • What kinds of communities can evolve from business-driven models? - The question is what we want, not “how to do” it in the first place.
  • Scale to what size? Do we have to supersize everything?
  • Scaling does not kill communities - the communities disintegrate if they become so huge that the members no longer feel connected
  • “Tool” is not equal to “community”
  • Have simple “rules”. Let users create the scale and complexity they need/want
  • Easy filtering for each user
  • Include community features as part of any initial setup - increased specialization via business model. Or cater to existing groups.
  • € is not equal to $ - is money important for (a) scaling? Buy servers etc., technology, (b) keeping a large number of people within the community? -→ message + people.
  • play with limits as scale for members/users
  • Apply the seven community design principles in your business model. (Design for (a) evolution, (b) levels of participation, © familiarity vs. excitement, etc. -→ Wenger et al.)

Is social software really different from previous tools such as chats, newsgroups etc? (Adolfo)

  • User Driven Approach
  • The content is more persistent on the net and easuer to find by others who are interested in a specific topic (spreading of opinions / networks)
  • In terms of user gratificatin probably not It’s just that tools are evolving that allow a more varied and individualised approach to self-expression and communicatin in different contexts.
  • social network platform is the only thing really new.

most of the others can be mapped to something else (homepage and guestbook -→ blog) IRC-→ Skype, Newsgroups -→ newsgroups.

  • Easiness of use
  • Context richness
  • The web is in the mainstream now, everybody knows how to use a browser.
  • one single protocol, http, which enables connections between services.
  • decentralised / more place for innovation and customization.
  • easiness of connecting:
(a) from top-down (administration) to bottom-up (individual)
(b) from static to dynamic increase of number of users.

Are blogs really just diaries or notebooks or textual objects? (Adolfo)

  • blogs have the capacity to be just about anything. However as Momus says “most people will be famous to 15 people” rather than anything grander, which is fine.
  • blogs are a great format for special interest information websites (watchblogs, scientist blogs)
  • blogs are texts because there is nothing beyond the text
  • more microformats and generic metadata needed.