Social software is an enabling technology, facilitating mediated communications, collaboration, and other human interactions
Stewart Butterfield outlines five devices:
The social networking system I will be discussing will encompass all of these devices
There's a new bubblet going on. What's out there in the Social Networking space?
| Friendster | Tribe.net | PeopleAggregator | |
| Status | Current front runner; dead end? | Initial slow growth, now gaining momentum | Pre-alpha; FOAF based |
| Funding | $13 million in a round of funding led by Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers | $6.3 million by Knight Ridder, The Washington Post Co. and Mayfield | none |
| Notes | Antipathy towards user-base; lack of tool development; however, largest network | Actively developing new features; currently specializing in listings | Notable for using FOAF; front-end for larger digital lifestyle aggregation framework; see dev notes |
Lynchpin of entire next-generation of collaborative and information technologies.
What's the difference between a distributed social software system versus a centralized system?
Defining an end-to-end architecture:
| Distributed | Centralized |
|---|---|
| Platform | Destination |
| Open | Closed |
| Extensible | Fixed |
| User-centric | Provider-centric |
Metcalfe's Law:
The value of a communications system grows as the square of the number of users of the system (N2)
Goals:
This field is moving quite rapidly, both in the academic and commercial realm, quite time sensitive.
By leveraging pre-established open standards and open source technologies, time-to-market can be cut by a significant (magnitude) factor
| Components | Est. Man-months |
|---|---|
| Core Architecture | 12-18 |
| Web Interface | 6 |
| P2P Client | 6 |
| OpenGIS extensions | 4-6 |
