Learn more about virtual communities and social software

I started this category which has since exploded with Web2.0. Twitter.com, tweetree.com, and more!

I am working for a social software startup and know as much as anyone for my chosen specialty.

http://bibliocommons.com/

flickr
youtube
myspace
delicious
istockphoto
blogger
linkedin

I’m interested in web usability practices and conventions for online communities. The above list includes communities that I’m either in already or am interested in exploring because of popularity or appeal.

I’m particularly interested in finding a well organized community that deals with public policy, local politics and the like on both a U.S. national and local level. Outside the U.S. would also be of interest, but I’d be an observer, I suppose.

Recommendations appreciated.

The thesis brief I picked for my final project was from Motorola: On the Move, explorations into the value of mobility in social networking.

“Read the project blog”: http://www.bananeira.net/school

I have been doing a lot of reading in this area of the past several years and here are some of the best resources I have come across so far:

• Infotopia by Cass R. Sunstein
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
• Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold
• Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler

Of course, you can always check out the patternhunter blog for more up-to-date news in this area.

This goal is not going to help me.

I have joined MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Orkut.
http://www.myspace.com/habibmi
http://www.friendster.com/habibmi
http://unc.facebook.com/p.php?id=2724087&l=29cd0f9cdf
http://www.linkedin.com/in/habib

I completed this class in the Fall of 2005.
Class website: http://ibiblio.org/pjones/jomc191/
Class blog: http://jomc191.blogsome.com/

For this class I wrote a review of 43Things:
http://www.unc.edu/~mchabib/43things/index.html
and began a blog:
http://mchabib.blogspot.com/

The following were the main readings for the class:
Required reading for this seminar:

Gillmor, Dan. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. O’Reilly and Associates July 2004.

Granovetter, Mark S. Strength of Weak Ties. Available from JSTOR at link above or The American Journal of Sociology © 1973 The Uniersity of Chicago Press.

Gurak, Laura, et al. Eds. “Into the Blogosphere”

Preece, Jenny. Online Communities, Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000.

Wellman, Barry and Haythornwaite, Caroline, eds. Internet in Everyday Life. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002.

Lin, Nan. Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. Cambridge UP, 2001.

What strikes me as interesting, having written web-based software (not social software per se) is that most social webware is built on very simple concepts. It is the interactions of the users that make the site worthwhile.

Take 43things for example. The concept is simple. You create a list of goals by naming them. You don’t have to have a goal approved or anything like that. Name it and BAM! it’s a goal. Other people can find your goal and add it to their list. Each goal has a series of comments attached to it, and there are two basic relationships between a person and a goal – Doing it or Done it.

Devilishly simple, but the power comes from people using the software to collaborate almost directly with other people, by posting entries like this with little tidbits of information. A link to a website here. A small anecdote pretaining to the goal. Some advice found useful.

Compare the simplicity-to-usefulness of something as simple as 43things to a complicated web content management system and its absolutely outrageous. Most of the work in the latter is done by the system, whereas the social web takes a hands-off approach and merely facilitates the users and helps them to interact to do amazing and interesting things.

Just thought that was interesting.

I think my favorites at the moment are LinkedIn, plaxo, and 43T/P/P. Awesome stuff.