Much has been written about how social software and social tools are truly worldchanging. For some who use these tools, this post may seem really basic, for others who are still early explorers, we hope it opens up new windows. I am an addict myself and will try and share stories about how they are changing the way I perceive the world and altering my behaviour. Wed love to hear your stories as well.
Christopher Allen has one of the best essays tracing the evolution of Social Software. Stowe Boyd has a pretty neat Social Commentary on Social Tools. Rob Paterson has a beautiful piece Going Home Our Reformation where he says :
I believe that Social Software is a vector a return to an old culture. When I say old culture, I mean the culture that fits the essential nature of humans and that fits nature itself. I imagine a return to the custom of being personally authentic, to a definition of work that serves the needs of our community, and to a society where our institutions serve to enhance all life. I see signs that that we are going home. See if you can see what I can see.
Id urge you to read the full post to truly understand how they are changing our world.
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Social tools have significantly changed the way I communicate and collaborate with friends and clients across continents. Some of the more generic benefits for me have been :
- spontaneity and immediacy in our interactions leading to better information and communication flows
- presence and mobility, both of which are so very important in an always-on world and can most definitely lead to client delight
- the ability to reach a really wide and diverse community that is not restricted by physical or temporal boundaries
- a basic freedom in expression that allows you to have stimulating conversations with global communities of similar interests. In ways that are non-threatening and non-competitive unlike some formal industry forums or interest groups
- a joy in abundance, that has made me believe in a share-learn-grow philosophy, one that says Yes And! and not Yes But!
Ill try and describe some of the tools I use daily, through examples :
a. Blogs - building bridges and communities
Enough has been said about how blogs are world changing. Some believe blogs are like your front porch; others use them as their own playground to build ideas upon. We see their influence in politics, in journalism and nowhere better evidenced than in the role they played and the influence they had in the efforts around the Earthquake and Tsunamis disaster in Southeast Asia.
Plenty has been said, pro and con about Blogs in the Workplace. Books are being written on it.
I am currently using a blog space for a project team across India and the US. The project is an ongoing ethnographic research. The blog space is really making a difference in the way we work together - it has cut down so much of formal email correspondence. We have categories and taxonomies that have emerged as a result of the research and our interactions through which our archiving is done. These have not been set they have simply emerged, demonstrating the power of the collaborative context so well. There is immediacy, spontaneity and flow by allowing comments on a single thread and on multiple threads. As a result of this space, our weekly conference calls are now really short - most of the interactions have been done on the blog already ! This never happened when we used email alone.
On a personal level, let me share a little blog moment I had. Two weeks ago I was at this small Korean eatery in Bangkok, enjoying a fantastic meal. Throughout the meal the young lady at the counter who was glued to her computer screen intrigued me. From her actions, I could tell she was browsing a lot, typing in stuff, then sitting back and reviewing it, and smiling. Then back to more writing. And smiling. I told my husband then that she looks like a blogger!
When we walked over to the counter to pay for our meal, I couldn't resist peeping at her screen ... and what I saw there looked so much like a blog ... except it was in a language I couldn't understand. So curious me asked her what it was that she was doing, and she said she said "blog" ! I was thrilled - there I was, a visitor from India in Bangkok, meeting a Korean blogger. So unexpectedly. She spoke very little English and I speak no Korean .... still we connected at some level, almost as if we were sharing a secret of sorts.
She then pointed to the right panel and showed me a list there and said "friends in Korea - we talk too", holding up her hand to her ear, and I immediately recalled having read somewhere about a deal between Daum and Skype, and was curious to know whether she had something like a Skyperoll on her blog from which she could call any of her friends. I said the word Skype to her with a question mark but she didn't seem to have heard of it. We exchanged email ids, blog urls, smiled again and then I left. Of course Hemant got the brunt of beaming "would you believe its...." all day from me!
b. Voice over IP via Skype a new communications lifestyle
Skype is part of a new communications lifestyle. It began with people in far away places and it's created all sorts of new connections. It allows people everywhere to make superior quality voice calls via its innovative, free, peer-to-peer software. Skype is available in 20 languages and is the fastest growing voice communications offering worldwide. Skype has more than 29 million registered users and is adding more than 155,000 new users per day. On average, 2 million people are simultaneously using Skype to connect with friends, family members and colleagues. Skypers have now talked for approx six billion minutes. (Note "minutes served" is tracked on the main Skype.com homepage and will likely hit 6 billion later today.)
Skype, since its launch, has been paving the way for a new culture of communication. A culture of communication that embraces flow, presence and mobility with compelling quality. Skype has been breaking new ground with every new release. SkypeOut that allows really great quality and low cost calls to landlines and mobile numbers (as low as 0.0172 euros for a minute to the UK or USA), messaging and multiparty chat that takes IM way beyond buddy lists, voice messaging that is more than voicemail, and multiparty conferencing. Imagine my delight when I was on a snorkelling trip on a small island called Koh Rock in Thailand with my cell phone signal really low, and I get a call from a friend in the US who is using SkypeOut to call me and we have this really cool conversation then. There are more than 1 million SkypeOut users already. Not here yet, but imminent, would be Skype on handsets, Skype with video.
Moreover, innovations around the API are bringing to bear new applications like Skypecasting, Skype calling cards, integration with mobile and cordless devices. With this, is the growing development of products and services around Skype. Individuals using the service own for the most part all the hardware required to operate the network. Thus unlike traditional telecoms, there is no need to build out infrastructure, new users simply bring it to Skype. A computer-mediated social network is the infrastructure. Skype is beginning to rewire and unwire the whole way in which we communicate. It is extending to business propositions, services and products that serve business processes and social interactions.
Let me share a little story on how Skype has changed the way I work with clients far away. I have a client in the US for whom were doing ongoing ethnographies here in India. We have weekly conference calls and I suggested they use Skype. We havent used the voice function as much as I would have liked to it is because not all parties in the call have Skype or good broadband connections. The beauty really is in the spontaneous chats and calls we often have in-between the conference calls. How often have you felt you have a small query and would just love to pick up the phone and clarify or get a point of view or an insight, instead of writing email and waiting for a response, or then waiting for the scheduled weekly conference call? Its too expensive to just pick up the phone and call someone in India for a small clarification, and usually perceived as not warranted. Also, due to the time differences between India and the US, as a client, one would hesitate to just pick up the phone and call someone at say 11 pm at night.
Skype counters these barriers first, my client knows whether I am online or not through the presence indicators on the main window. Second, if he sees me there he sends me a brief note Dina, u available for a 2 minute call? Then its easy you dont worry about intruding into someones space at odd hours, you dont need to wait to get your clarification, and it costs nothing.
Ive also just got myself a SkypeIn number in the US this is still in beta and I tried it with a friend and it worked beautifully from her landline. Im now sending it to my clients in the US for the weekly call they can call me on this number, and pay nothing !
Small delights make for better information flows and happy clients thank you Skype! The best independent resource for all things Skype is Bill Campbell and Stuart Henshall's Skype Journal , just launched a month ago. Another example of how a blog that is independent, can actually influence the trajectory of a service or product, and harness the collective intelligence around it.
At last count, 380 SNSs. Conferences dedicated to them. At one time, my window to the world. A great place to connect with people with shared interests easy entry barriers, soft human profiles that encourage connections and inexpensive.
Until my blog became my social network. Today, there are perhaps too many me-toos and not enough to differentiate them. There are those who love them, those who think they are broken , and those who are opting out.
Recently, there is new interest with the launch of Yahoo 360 and MSN spaces. Ourmedia is another recent launch a community space to share and discuss personal media including grassroots video, audio, photos, text and public domains work. I just came across Bolt, which is a youth hang-out on the web a few days ago.
Perhaps the real value is in what Jon articulates so well I personally think the SNs will be valuable, not as ends in themselves, but as part of systems like Flickr that use the SNSs to support a targeted purpose.
I also believe that if SNSs can embody cross-over platforms that are within your control, where you select your clients for email, IM, blogs, SNSs, wikis, VOIP, tags, video and roll them all-in-one in one space, it would be wonderful. This is where MSN Spaces or Yahoo! 360° fail for me, while they integrate many of these features, they also take away control from the user.
d. Tagging - creating new language and shared meaning.
I'm exploring Tagging. Late to the party - still....
I always used Google Alert which in some ways is personal tagging. I like Furl its easy bookmarking and can be shared with others. I never really explored del.icio.us enough. Flickr tags are so so cool. And I'm enjoying Technorati tags. I remember Ethan telling me, when he was in India, that he uses this so effectively - he tags a region he is interested in and follows all blogs and posts made - he has discovered bridge blogs and made some delightful and unexpected connections as a result. That is so cool!
I'm beginning to feel the power is really in the emergent language or taxonomy it allows you to create for yourself, in the structure and meaning you imbue in ordering the chaos. In some ways within your own control. And it is in how this language and meaning you create can be shared over the web.
I'm still not clear though about the differences between bookmarks, keywords, tags and folksonomies. Is it that some are private and others social? Is it in the control - whether under the user or the community building the folksonomies or the algorithm? Is it semantic?
Jon again helps me out here he says ""Bookmarks are not necessarily categorized, and keywords can be used in many contexts including tagging. Tags use keywords for categories that the user defines (rather than trying to fit into some existing taxonomy), so you have emergent tags. Folksonomy is what you get at a site like del.ico.us, where you have visibility into all the tags developed by everybody, and shared categories emerge people adapt their tagging to existing categories in some cases, and create their own in others. Its a messy, democratic, energized, stimulating way of doing taxonomy"
e. Then theres a whole other list syndication and newsreaders, podcasting, IM clients, conferencing, etc which I wont be talking of in this post.
Some social tools I'd love to see in the near future ...
- Skype on mobile phones, where I can receive and make Skype calls from my mobile phone. Thats going to really squeeze traditional telcos.
- The increased use of some of these tools in managing disasters.
- Skype with as good video quality as the audio currently is.
- Cross-over platforms within your control (you can select your clients for email, IM, blogs, SNSs, wikis, VOIP, tags, video and roll them all-in-one).
- Social Software for Set-Top Boxes?
Wed love to invite comments and shares from our readers on how you use Social Tools and what difference they are making in your lives. This would add tremendous value to our continued understanding of this medium.
