Interactive innovation through Social Software and

Web 2.0Thomas Ryberg

PhD studente-Learning Lab, Department of Communication and

Psychologyryberg@hum.aau.dkhttp://www.ell.aau.dk

Made with Web 2.0 Logo-creator: http://msig.info/web2.php

Outline

• Web 2.0 and social software – core points• Demonstration and showcases of “Web 2.0

and social software” services and software The technological perspective The conceptual perspective

• Interactive Innovation – my spin on this: User generated content, user driven

innovation, hackability, widgetality and the perpetual beta!

• A small task for you :

Task

• Imagine/Create an internet based service that works on mobile devices – must take into account: Location A social graph with

connections/relations and exchange of content.

Bring in data/services from other sites• You are very welcome to relate it to

or base it on your project work

Web 2.0 and SoSo

Web 2.0 and social software• Have you heard about and know the terms?• What’s the fuzz??

Web 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: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

• 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 has been re-organised to accommodate to ‘user generated content’ or ‘citizen journalism’! (www.nationen.nu, luftskibet.information.dk, computerworld.dk, ditcentrum.dk)

• Should we understand this as software and services or as a conceptual framework?

“Web 1.0” “Web 2.0”

Ofoto Flickr

Akamai BitTorrent

mp3.com Napster

Britannica Online Wikipedia

Personal websites Blogging

Web services publishing Participation

Content management systems Wikis

Directories (taxonomy) Tagging ("folksonomy")

Stickiness Syndication (RSS, XML)

Web 1.0 Web 2.0

Some Examples: www.furl.net, www.elgg.net, http://www.librarything.com

Matrice above adapted from: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

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, GoogleDocs, reader, Flockr

IM-integration, Calendars

Google Earth, Yahoo Maps etc.

“Standards”

Open Source, OpenAPI

RSS, CSS, XML, FOAF, XFN, HTML

AJAX

Mash-ups

Services

Web 2.0 and SoSo

Conceptual

“Software” RIA

Technologies

Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

• Users as first class entities in the system prominent profile pages featuring e.g: age, sex, location Testimonials, or comments about the user by other users.

• The ability to form connections between users links to other users who are “friends” membership in “groups” subscriptions or RSS feeds of “updates” from other users

• The ability to post content in many forms: photos, videos, blogs Comments and ratings on other users’ content Tagging of own or others’ content Some ability to control privacy and sharing.

• More technical features, including a public API to allow third–party enhancements and “mash–ups,” embedding of various rich content types (e.g., Flash videos),

and communication with other users through internal e–mail or IM systems.

Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0by Graham Cormode and Balachander KrishnamurthyFirst Monday, Volume 13 Number 6 - 2 June 2008http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2125/1972

Web 2.0 core point• Technological dimensions:

Blogs, podcast, wikis, tags RSS-feeds, web as platform (Ajax, Java-script)

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) – Google docs, web-office• Conceptual dimensions

User Generated content - but rather than finished materials/data - ongoing evolving streams and continuous ‘dialogues’

User ratings/reviews Folksonomies Sharing, collaborating, exchanging Bottom-up – architecture of participation Easier exchange (technological) - aggregation and distribution

• Popular services Social networking sites (myspace, facebook, del.icio.us)

• Ego-centric – personal networks around profiles• Object-centric – networks around shared material

Personalised resource centers (Igoogle, Live-servies, Yahoo 360)• Aggregation of media, ressources and ‘news’

Ideas about “new” social constellations or aggregations• Networks between people

working collaboratively • Networks between people

sharing a context• Networks between people

sharing a field of interest • (Dalsgaard, 2006):http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm

Picture taken from: (Andersson, 2008) http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/networks-versus-groups-in-higher-education/

Learner in the centre

Let’s briefly explore some examples of this – there are however many other sites and mixes

Stigmercy

Picture taken from: (Andersson, 2008) http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/networks-versus-groups-in-higher-education/

Stigmergy is a mechanism of spontaneous, indirect coordination between agents or actions, where the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a subsequent action, by the same or a different agent. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, apparently intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even communication between the agents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy

Youtube – User Generated Content

• Most popular example of user generated content

• Object centric but also profile based

• Genre mix, creativity, comments

• Typical features, one can embed videos other places, easily share, have a list of personal favourites and playlist – user ratings

User Generated Relevance – user ratings & reviews

• Front page decided by collective of users (and advertisers) Youtube, Digg, delicious, flickr

• Invisible collective or aggregation of non-coordinated actions are co-creating the sites (stigmercy) – e.g. through software-algoritms Tag-clouds Popular videoes But also: Creates order in chaos

(clusters) Creates new relations and

connections (or re-create existing)

Related tags, related videoes (hot hot hot), related persons (e.g. facebook – if you know you might also want to know)

Social Network Sites• Facebook is one of many SNS’• What is an SNS? – a broad definition:

“We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.” (boyd & Ellison 2007, min fremhævning)

“What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks.” (boyd & Ellison, 2007, min fremhævning)

boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

SNS

• SNS in an historical perspective

• Back to 1997 but only recently populated and popular on a mass scale

• Until late 2005 the term SNS relatively unknown in DK

• Model fra (boyd & Ellison, 2007)

Individual in the centre – of the network

• Individual in the centre – profiles with varying degrees of information

• Individual without social network does not make sense (narcissism – I would not agree!)

• All the pages build on different kinds of network Ego-centric

network Objekt-centric

network

Connections and relations become visible

• Relations btw “friends”• Connections to “groups” • Comments and

‘testimonals’ - continuum of intimate/personal to neutral/professional

• Connections to content/data (RSS) – updates from others (status, content, location) Plazes.com, Twitter Events on FB

• Personalised and self-chosen streams of information/data

Lifestreaming, Microblogging

• Microblogging, livestreaming (facebook status updates on steroids)

• Focus on collecting streams (new FB strategy) – friendfeed, sweetcron mfl.

Own and others’ streams

• Social phenomenon – network comments, awareness

• Coupled with location – GPS in camera and mobile – lifestream, lifepath? Lifemapping? E.g.: http://www.iphonetwitters.comhttp://www.socialoyster.com

• Business– FB walled garden – takes in loads of data…little comes out!

“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

Easier exchange of content – RSS, mashups, widgets

• Through various standards and technologies it has become easier to exchang ‘content’ between different systems RSS-feeds (subscribe to

what others bookmark, new videoes, news etc.)

E.g. Youtube videoes can be embedded elsewhere

Facebook can get info from Friendfeed, Delicious etc.

One can easilier integrate widgets and mashups on a page

• “Open” standards, Open APIs give way for WIDGETS – MASHUP

Sharing across different social constellationsHomebase(s) – profile PLE

Strength of tie

Own content

Friends’ content

Groups’ content

Collectives’ content – aggregated other

Shared fields of interest – imagined communities

Glued together by RSS, Widgets, ‘open standards’, open APIs – Streams of continuously evolving ‘data’ and ‘information’ that can be somewhat easily manipulated

We all become entrance points into complex (overlapping) networks

Technological perspective

• Some of the tech-stuff: AJAX that allows web-office – live editing

updating (maybe some of you know more?) Standards and exchange ’protocols’: RSS, XML,

CSS, java-script, Flash, HTML OpenAPIs and Open Source Software – not the

same, but OpenAPIs and exchange mechanisms open for MashUps

This results in: aggregation, distribution, widgetality and hackability

The technological perspective

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Web20buzz.png

• Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.

• SOURCE: www.techcrunch.com

•Profile Information (user data) •Friends Information (social graph) •Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Aggregation, distribution, Hackability

• Agg/Distr: Interoperability of systems Import content from other sites or streams into one’s own page

through RSS or XML document - tapestries of microcontent• Hackability

Code is open or freely available API One can create services that draws on Google Maps e.g.

Findvej.dk. Profiles on some SNS supports HTML, javascript and one can

customise the looks, import video from youtube, bookmarks from del.icio.us, create tag-clouds and so on.

• Also becoming available in gadgets and OS’es (Chumby, Xbox, MacOS, Vista – or extensions for FireFox)

• 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.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_widget

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. 275 flickr-mashups:http://www.programmableweb.com/api/flickr/mashups

• Or: http://www.programmableweb.com/mashups

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 is 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, Facebook, MySpace etc.) – hence some call it loser-driven innovation

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 is problematic!! Place, space and location is ALL – closeness, personal, social networks, intimacy

• Here are some citations from Danish Arto users – why they use arto: ”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)

”That I won’t lose some of my IRL-friends!” (Boy, 17) Why are you using facebook/myspace??

• The social fabric of the web is tightly related 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 technologies• Space, Place and location - Plazes.com• Location based games – PacManhattan

http://www.in-duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_games.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_based_game• Intermixture between virtual/real• GPRS, GPS, mobile location (moblogging tied to places,

coupled e.g. With google maps) or services like Dodgeball• GIS: http://www.opensourcegis.org/• Web 2.0-based distributed map system for an EU-project on

regional economical development: http://www.communitywalk.com/map/159477

• A Mashup from participants in the PlaceME project:http://mashreality.com/view.html

Interactive Innovation• User generated content and innovation –

Understanding 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!

Creating 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 This is equally true for ordinary products – medical equipment, sporting

equipment and loads of other products benefit from engaged user communities (Franke & Shah, 2002 - How Communities Support Innovative Activities)

• 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

• New ways of organising and managing development and innovation – www.cofundos.org – also the Linux community has (I have been told) created a new way of adding updates – from hierarchy to distributed, networked ’voting’ system – building on reputation and social capital of the programmer (anybody knows more?)

Gluing and weaving of systems

Bibsonomy

Bloglines

Flickr

MySpace

YouTube

Furl

Dodgeball

Librarything

Web 2.0 -systems – gluing and weaving together different content, services and systems

Some references

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Social_Software

Task

• Imagine/Create an internet based service that works on mobile devices – must take into account: Location A social graph with

connections/relations and exchange of content.

Bring in data/services from other sites• You are very welcome to relate it to

your work