Social Software and Web 2.0 – Interactive Innovation Thomas Ryberg PhD student e-Learning Lab, Department of Communication and Psychology Made with Web 2.0 Logo-creator: This work is published under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5

Outline Some confessions and warnings! Web 2.0 – core points Demonstration and showcases of “Web 2.0 and social software” services and software BThe technological perspective BThe conceptual perspective BUnderstanding the sociology of technology use! Interactive Innovation – my spin on this: BUser generated content, user driven innovation, hackability, widgetality and the perpetual beta!

Some confessions DANGER! We are entering an area of extreme hype and buzz; I tells ya!! We should be aware of the buzzification and commercialisation of academia – there are a lot of floating signifiers around: BInnovation, critical mass, synergy, experience economy, user driven innovation and design These concepts we need to juggle carefully and give meaning to them We all have a responsibilty in treating them with some academic skepticism as well We also need to think of whom terms, concepts, movements and the products of academic work will benefit; whether material or conceptual products

Web 2.0 and social software Have you heard about and know the terms? What’s the fuzz?? BWeb 2.0 refers to a second generation of services available on the internet that let people collaborate, and share information online. They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The term may include blogs and wikis. To some extent Web 2.0 is a buzzword, incorporating whatever is newly popular on the Web (such as tags and podcasts), and its meaning is still in flux. Adapted from: May be a lot of buzz – but it’s buzz that’s supported and developed by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft… Also the entire media landscape in DK is currently re- organising to accommodate to ‘user generated content’ or ‘citizen journalism’! Should we understand this as software and services or a conceptual framework?

This news just in: Computerworld podcast 12/10/06: BWeb 2.0 er et tomt begreb (Web 2.0 is an empty concept)...suggests that it should be replaced by ’social media’...that certainly added the clarity we needed B”Unge gider ikke social networking” (Youth don’t bother social networking) – apparently DR SKUM lost a lot of users the last year and Morten Bay argues – They should use mobile phones like Helio and MySpace...arto.dk has more than profiles, online (now...then) and they introduced ArtoD2 a mobile chat application app. a year ago...Maybe the problem lies with SKUM and not youth...

“Web 1.0”  “Web 2.0” OfotoFlickr AkamaiBitTorrent mp3.comNapster Britannica OnlineWikipedia Personal websitesBlogging Web services publishingParticipation Content management systemsWikis Directories (taxonomy)Tagging ("folksonomy") StickinessSyndication (RSS, XML) Web 1.0Web 2.0 Some Examples: Matrice above adapted from:

From:

Del.icio.us, furl, Bibsonomy, CiteULike Youtube, Revver, Flickr, Riya Digg, technorati, craigslist Plazes, Myspace, arto, dodgeball, hi5 Live, Yahoo360, Google Podcasting, Wikis, Blogs Folksonomies, Architecture of participation, botto- up User driven innovation & design, citizen journalism Collective intelligence, sharing, exchanging Aggregation, distribution Hackability, Widgetality Copy-left Rich internet apps, Web-office/desktops Livewriter, writely, reader, Flock IM-integration, Calendars Google Earth, Yahoo Maps etc. “Standards” Open Source, OpenAPI RSS, CSS, XML, FOAF, XFN AJAX Mash-ups Services Web 2.0 and SoSo Conceptual “Software” RIA Technologies

Some metaphors and “movements” on the internet Individual user: browsing centrally defined web-pages, or constructing such a webpage – webpages as information silos! Communities: With strong relations and common goals/enterprises – usenet, online communities (Communities of Practice) – Soap Opera, Computer Games etc. Networked Individualism: Constant traversing of different types of networks with strong and weak ties. Constructing an individual, but deeply relational network, through blog-rings, tagging, sharing links, aggregating or distributing news via RSS – social networking sites have become increasingly popular: Hi5.com, Friendster, MySpace, Arto.dk, dodgeball.com These types of use are of course co-existing and overlapping

Some web-trends From communities to networked structures From centrally defined content and static pages to user driven content (Blogs, Wikis, Flickr, Wikipedia) – democratisation of Knowledge and content? “Web 2.0 either empowers the individual and provides an outlet for the 'voice of the voiceless'; or it elevates the amateur to the detriment of professionalism, expertise and clarity.” (Citation from: Potential Democratisation, de-centralisation and anarchy – “back to the future” – the original idea of the Internet according to Tim Berners Lee e.g. Creative Commons alternative copyright licences, The Open Source Movement, whole notion of sharing and collaborating Distribution, Aggregation and tagging of various media and content – from hierarchical directories and central ownership to distributed, user driven “folksonomies” and media aggregation From consumers to producers: a recent study from PEW internet research concluded that 57% of American teens are producing content for the web of various nature (blogs, fan-fiction etc.). But this might also be overstated – depending on the perspective.

Services!

Services Sharing links, bookmarks, references Folksonomy – information architecture “designed” by users Search, tags, archives – relies on the power of weak ties, networks of interests and trust – “collective intelligence” emerges RSS, Refer, Bibtex, Endnote Aggregation, distribution

Services Sharing, exchanging, watching, rating, commenting User generated content: video, pictures, audio Search, tags, clusters, popularity, mass, picture search (face recognition) Distribute, aggregate through widgets, RSS, links, Java-scripts

Services Rating, sharing, commenting, hot/not, promotion, electronic billboard Search, tags, power of weak ties, location (DK, US), placeness User driven rating and content, mass, popularity, no center Distribute, RSS, widgets, blogrolls

Services Networking, profiles, interests, strong and weak ties, communication, discussion, identity, sharing Closeness, placeness, locality discovering, networking Heavily widgetised, and mediatised – audio, video Distribute, aggregate, convergence, GPS, OpenAPIs, SMS, mobility

“Software” Like regular apps – but they’re online – web-office, calendar, news reader, Web OS etc. Also stand alone apps – Google Earth Discover, search, location, placeness, closeness Collaborative editing, sharing calendars, Social networks – sharing placemarks, layers Integration with maps, wikipedia, external sites

The technological perspective Some of all this stuff are new technologies; some are older technologies, which have been popularised e.g. blogs, wikis

Technological perspective Some of the tech-stuff: BAJAX that allows web-office – live editing updating (maybe some of you know more?) BStandards and exchange ’protocols’: RSS, XML, CSS, java-script, Flash BOpenAPIs and Open Source Software – not the same, but OpenAPI and exchange mechanisms open for MashUps BThis results in: aggregation, distribution, widgetality and hackability

Aggregation, distribution, Hackability Agg/Distr: This refers to the interoperability of systems e.g. How one through RSS or XML document can import content from other sites or streams into one own page e.g. One page with all blog-posting, Flickr pictures, sport-results, news etc. create a tapestry of microcontent Hackability is the notion that code is open or there is a freely available API, one can create services that draws on Google Maps e.g. Findvej.dk. That profiles on Arto and Myspace supports HTML, javascript where one can customise the looks, import video from youtube, bookmarks from del.icio.us, create tag-clouds and so on. It is also becoming available in gadgets and OS’es – one can tamper with the coding, hardware and so on to create new services or functions (Chumby, Xbox, MacOS is full of widgets, so Vista will be) Widgets are the easy way of doing this – mashups are a little harder but great fun!

Widgetality A Web Widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate html-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are akin to plugins or extensions in desktop applications. Other terms used to describe a Web Widget include Gadget, Badge, Module, Capsule, Snippet, Mini and Flake. Web Widgets often but not always use Adobe Flash or JavaScript programming languages.

Mash-ups By using the possibilites of exchange, distribution and aggregation (refers both to aggregation, but also to specific software mashups) new services/software are created E.g. 10 best flickr-mashups: 6/08/index4a_page2.html?tw=commentary 6/08/index4a_page2.html?tw=commentary Or: ps ps

MashUps

The conceptual perspective Sharing, collaborating, connecting, networking, identity work – harnessing the power of both weak and strong ties in networks Hive-intelligence (stupid term!) – Two heads are better than one - one million heads are even better – Wikipedia; no central expert, but distributed intelligence (though questionable) Folksonomies – the bottom-up approach – the structure and what is important are decided by the users, not a central categorisation unit, what is hot news depends on the users, not an editor User-driven innovation and user generated content – people upload and share their homemade pictures, videoes, bookmarks, calendars etc. creating ’creative’ personal profiles through use of scripting, widgets, light-weight coding, mashups and so on. Funny tension: Copy-left, Open Source, Free software foundation – information should be free vs. We make shit-loads of money on idiots freely giving their videos away and all their personal information (Google, Youtube, MySpace etc.) – hence some call it loser-driven innovation

Understanding the sociology of technology Some of this stuff is pretty nerdy and funny; but some of the thoughts surrounding all of this is quite philosophical/academic: BAre blogs the savior of modern democracy or are they the biggest attempt till date to flatten our culture with superstitious narcissistic babblings? BAre moblogs and videoblogs the liberation of consumers in a process of making them into content producers or are we witnessing an overflow of reality TV addicts gone crazy in exposing themselves online? BProvocative (and purposely wrong questions from Søren Mørk) What we need to realise: BThis is just part of people’s lives – it is a way of being in the world, which is social, banal, mundane, meaningful, purposeful; it is part of people’s identity, friendships and social networks BMaybe wrong to speak of ’content’ – maybe better to take about events, situations, life-bits

Social fabric of everyday life Online/offline – makes no sense – the web and web 2.0 for that matter is a continuation, overlap, extension of everyday life Virtual/Real – makes no sense: people are real in the virtual, some identity play, but identity is very often tied to location, everyday doings, interests, friends and so on – quite mundane The notion of virtual networks as non-places (Christopher Lash) is nonsense!! Place, space and location is ALL – closeness, personal, close social networks, intimacy Here are some citations from Danish Arto users – why they use arto: B”that I have more contact with my friends… also when we’re together… because then we might talk about something that happened in here…” (Girl, 15) B”That I won’t lose some of my IRL-friends!” (Boy, 17) The social fabric of the web is tightly closed to the local, the place, the location and the creation of a personal, but relational identity Barry Wellman terms it: Glocalization – we do become more global, but we do not become less local or grounded

Location based technology Space, Place and location - Plazes.com Location based games – PacManhattan Bhttp:// duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_ games.phphttp:// duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_ games.php Bhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_based_ga me Intermixture between virtual/real GPRS, GPS, mobile location (moblogging tied to places, coupled e.g. With google maps) or services like Dodgeball GIS:

Interactive Innovation User generated content and innovation – BUnderstanding how technologies speak into people’s lives, identities and connects to their streams of experience, their being in the world and connection to others – the social fabric of life! BCreating architectures of meaningful participation, opportunities for engaging with peers, networks and developing situations, events, life-bits Hackability, widgetality – keep it open, modifiable, listen to and understand the users, let them play, hack, modify, develop The perpetual beta! You’re never done, people’s needs will change, their practices and ways of using the systems will develop and change, which in turn will mean you’ll have to change the systems to accommodate to emerging needs

Some suggestions Mob-logging, flickr galleries from the culture night, collective tagging of the culture night events – coupling Maps with Wikis, ”Live”-podcasting Ratemystore – user ratings, recommendations – location based information Location based games Flickr live streams on screens

Some references ftware