Sharing with Social Software

41175460 – Jamie Coleman

Introduction

Social software and the many forms that it now comes in provides us with many new and exciting ways of interacting amongst each other. Many aspects of social interaction can now be done through social software. It has the potential to totally change or even replace more traditional methods of social interaction.

In this post I will be looking at how social software changes a particular aspect of social interaction. What I will be discussing is sharing. Sharing as it is discussed in this post does not only include sharing of media but a broader spectrum of sharing that we do with one another. This includes the sharing of such things as opinions, knowledge, schedules and even friends.

In terms of scope I will mainly focus on more of the social side rather than the collaborative(CSCW) side. This is because I think that the motivations of such software differ slightly from the more 'social' kind of software and that the context in which it is used is usually different. To cover both would be too much for this post.

Another thing to note is that while email can be considered as part of social software I have decided to discuss email as a more traditional approach to social interaction as its been around for a very long time and is basically not to different from traditional mail/letters.

Background

Most social software and services incorporate some kind of sharing into their products. User created content and contributions are what web2.0 is fundamentally built upon. Essentially what we are doing more and more with software is sharing. Some of the sites that I will be discussing in this post are provided bellow with a short description of what they do.

Delicious: Allows users to store and share as well as search for bookmarks online. One of its key features and central to sharing is its support for folksonomy tagging.

Blogger: A blog publishing system which allows users to publish and maintain blogs.

Last.fm: A service that allows for users to share their tastes in music. Interact with people that have similar tastes in music, get music recommended.

Flickr: A photo sharing service that allows users to upload, store and share images and photos with others.

These software and the experiences I have had from them is where I have formed most of my opinions from. Each of these sites are unique in their own way and provide users with different aspects of sharing. For example Flickr allow for sharing of media whereas Delicious lets users share bookmarks and their opinion that certain sites are worth bookmarking. Blogger supports the sharing of ideas and personal events while last.fm lets users share tastes in music amongst each other.

Focus

What I intend to focus on in the rest of the post is how software is providing us with new ways of sharing and how these change how we share and are attitude towards sharing. I will reflect on how social software has changed the way I share and attempt to analyse why this is.

Reflection

I am finding that I share a lot more since my adoption of social software. I find it extremely easy to share and that it is a more routine task and casual task. With traditional methods I shared a lot less and only when I really needed or wanted to.

From what I can tell there are several reasons as to why social software is making me share a lot more. I also feel that sharing is easier and a lot more casual. The following are some key aspects of social software that have made it a lot easier to share things with other people.

Asynchronous Sharing

One of the key features of a lot of social software is that they allow for asynchronous interaction between users. This means that I don't have to physically meet people to share things like media. People can go through what I have to share at a time that suits them best. This is extremely important in that I don't have to worry if the other person is busy. People can come and read my blog when ever they want to.

Less Intrusive Sharing


This feature is related to the previous. Sometimes sharing via email or face to face can be a little to intrusive[1]. It sometimes feels like your forcing stuff upon people and then making them respond to it. This maybe fine with people you are close with but what about people you aren't so close to? There may be things you want to share with a person but email might just not be appropriate. For example if I went on a trip overseas and took some photos I would want to share them and my experience with people. Even if they're not that close to me I think that it might still interest them. This doesn't mean that I'm going to send an email to every single person I know, those close to me and those not so close.

Software like Flickr on the other hand allows me to share with who ever is interested and I know in a more subtle and low key way. This allows for me to share things with people that aren't that close to me as well as people that are close.


Inversion of Responsibility

With traditional methods it was the job of the person sharing and offering something to notify and send things. With social software this is often reversed. It is common for social software to pull users and not to push content to users as the pull model is a more people centric[2]. A lot of the time it is the responsibility of the receiver to find what ever anyone else is sharing. Receivers have the option to receive feeds for updates like in Blogger, or they can just make regular visits to places. This means that I'm not forcing anything on anyone and that who ever is viewing/sharing the content that I have contributed is doing so on their own will. If they don't like it they can go elsewhere. This is probably why many social sites feel less intrusive as it is the receiver that makes the decision to view content, it is voluntary.

I feel that this means I can share a lot more stuff since I don't have to worry about only sharing content that will be widely accepted.

Sharing with your self

One thing I find with social software is that they are extremely useful as storage or repositories for personal data. Social networking sites will allow me to organise my contacts/friends, Flickr lets me store photos, Blogger lets me organise my thoughts and record them and Delicious stores my bookmarks. Features like allowing to keep some content private like in Flickr really supports this.

Centralisation of Sharing

Everything is centralised, usually on to a single page or area meaning that what you share and the feedback that you get from what you are sharing are on the same page. This is true for sites like blogger and Flickr which allow users to leave comments. Having feed back from other people you share with in a single place is very convenient and gives you a clear picture of the kind of response whatever it is that you are sharing is generating.

When sharing knowledge in blogs with people your post can easily be referred to at a latter point meaning less repetition on your part. People can always view your posting again if they want to. You are able to answer questions in the comments section meaning you only have to answer once.

Keeping everyone informed is also a lot easier due to everything being centralised. Going back to a previous point, the fact that it is up to the receiver to check also makes it easier as there is only one channel/direction of communication.

Ease of use and the Change in the Environment

One of the key features of popular social software that I have observed is that it is easy to use. For example bookmarking on Delicious is about 4 clicks without writing comments. With last.fm you don't have to do anything. Blogger has an add-on feature called BlogThis! which allows you to blog from your browser without visiting Blogger. Clicking the BlogThis! Button creates a mini interface with the address of the page you're at in the text.

I feel that the ease of use make sharing a more casual day-to-day experience compared to how it was previously. If you had decided to write an email and share something it meant that you thought whatever it is that you were sharing was really important or interesting. Compare this to something like Twitter.

The environment and context in which we share has greatly changed as well. Essentially what social software often offers the choice to sharing while your doing something. For example last.fm shares while you listen to music. Many photo management software offer an option to export to Flickr. This means that Flickr then becomes easily integrated in to your regular process of managing photos. I have found that it feels extremely natural importing photos locally and then exporting them to Flickr through the same software. It just feels streamlined as it is a small extension to what I have always been doing. In fact I think it takes about two clicks to export to Flickr.

New Ways of Sharing

Personally I think that one of the reasons why blogs caught on and have become so popular was that it was totally new way of communicating and sharing ideas for most of us. If you think about it there really isn't any realistic way of doing what you do in a blog using the traditional methods of social interaction and sharing blogging is really unlike that of any previous social movement[3]. I feel that none of the traditional methods provide the right tool for what is achieved through blogging.

Sharing is Rewarding

Sharing is a two way procedure. You give and you get something back. This can be feedback or it can be other content. What a lot of the social software I have experienced offers rewards for sharing. The idea is that the more you share the more you can get out of it. This is especially true for software such as last.fm where sharing more means a greater chance in finding other people who like the same music or music that you would like.

Delicious also gives a lot back but in a less obvious way. The idea is that the more you and others bookmark the more effective the tags become meaning that searching for related sites becomes easier. It also makes finding sites of significance for certain topics easy[4].

Conclusion

In conclusion I feel that social software provides new and often, much more flexible options for the very same social interactions that were done traditionally. Sharing is one aspect of social interaction that has greatly benefited from the flexibility that social software provides. I personally feel that social software has made me more active in sharing as it provides easy to use tools as well as much more convenient model of sharing. This includes the topics that were discussed such as responsibility inversion and less intrusive sharing. It is my opinion that social software makes the process of sharing, whether it be media, knowledge, opinion or people much more rewarding than it has ever been.

References

[1]. G. Cormode et al,”Key Difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0”, AT&T Labs–Research, Febuary 13, 2008, Available: http://www.research.att.com/~bala/papers/web1v2.pdf.

[Accessed: Apr.3, 2009]

[2]. J.Hagel et al, “From Push To Pull”, Journal of Service Science, Third Quarter 2008, pg. 93 – 100, Available: http://www.cluteinstitute-onlinejournals.com/PDFs/1274.pdf. [Accessed: Apr.3, 2009]

[3]. A. Loewnstein, “The Bloggin Revolution Lands”, Antony Lowenstein. [Online].

Available: http://antonyloewenstein.com/blog/2008/08/23/the-blogging-revolution-lands/ [Accessed: Apr. 3, 2009].

[4]. C.Shirky, “Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags”, Clay Shirky's Writtings about the Internet. [Online]. Available: http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html [Accessed: Apr. 3, 2009].