Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote co-operation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before. The opportunities offered by social software are instant connections and opportunities to learn. An additional defining feature of social software is that apart from interaction and collaboration, it aggregates the collective behaviour of its users, allowing not only crowds to learn from an individual but individuals to learn from the crowds as well. Hence, the interactions enabled by social software can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many.
Types
Instant messaging
An instant messaging application or client allows one to communicate with another person over a network in real time, in relative privacy. One can add friends to a contact or buddy list by entering the person's email address or messenger ID. If the person is online, their name will typically be listed as available for chat. Clicking on their name will activate a chat window with space to write to the other person, as well as read their reply.
Text chat
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and other online chat technologies allow users to join and communicate with many people at once, publicly. Users may join a pre-existing chat room or create a new one about any topic. Once inside, you may type messages that everyone else in the room can read, as well as respond to/from others. Often there is a steady stream of people entering and leaving. Whether you are in another person's chat room or one you've created yourself, you are generally free to invite others online to join you in that room.
Collaborative software
The goal of collaborative software, also known as groupware, such as Moodle, Landing pages, Enterprise Architecture, and SharePoint, is to allow subjects to share data – such as files, photos, text, etc. for the purpose of project work or schoolwork. The intent is to first form a group and then have them collaborate. Clay Shirky defines social software as "software that supports group interaction". Since groupware supports group interaction (once the group is formed), it would consider it to be social software.
Internet forums
Originally modeled after the real-world paradigm of electronic bulletin boards of the world before internet was widely available, internet forums allow users to post a "topic" for others to review. Other users can view the topic and post their own comments in a linear fashion, one after the other. Most forums are public, allowing anybody to sign up at any time. A few are private, gated communities where new members must pay a small fee to join. Forums can contain many different categories in a hierarchy, typically organized according to topics and subtopics. Other features include the ability to post images or files or to quote another user's post with special formatting in one's own post. Forums often grow in popularity until they can boast several thousand members posting replies to tens of thousands of topics continuously. There are various standards and claimants for the market leaders of each software category. Various add-ons may be available, including translation and spelling correction software, depending on the expertise of the operators of the bulletin board. In some industry areas, the bulletin board has its own commercially successful achievements: free and paid hardcopy magazines as well as professional and amateur sites. Current successful services have combined new tools with the older newsgroup and mailing list paradigm to produce hybrids. Also, as a service catches on, it tends to adopt characteristics and tools of other services that compete. Over time, for example, wiki user pages have become social portals for individual users and may be used in place of other portal applications.
Wikis
In the past, web pages were only created and edited by web designers that had the technological skills to do so. Currently there are many tools that can assist individuals with web content editing. Wikis allow novices to be on the same level as experienced web designers because wikis provide easy rules and guidelines. Wikis allow all individuals to work collaboratively on web content without having knowledge of any markup languages. A wiki is made up of many content pages that are created by its users. Wiki users are able to create, edit, and link related content pages together. The user community is based on the individuals that want to participate to improve the overall wiki. Participating users are in a democratic community where any user can edit any other user's work.
Blogs
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