It’s probably the inner academic in me but I love white papers. Adrian Chan, an award-winning web developer located in San Francisco, California, specializing in social interaction design has put together an interesting white paper examining principles of social interaction design through examples of social software sites such as Flickr, Tribe, Friendster, MySpace, and others.
Its 76 pages long, reads more like a blog/essay than an industry white paper but is populated with good insight. I’ve posted some tasty quotes and observations below:
On Social Media’s ‘voice’:
Because it is supplied directly by participants, social media talk is less produced than that of the mass media, and relations are generally more authentic and real (closer to the street, and real life, paradoxically).
On Myspace
MySpace has a proactive “always on” posture towards virtual presence. While members don’t have to meet in real-time as they do, for example, in online games, lines are always open and the dial tone is constant. And MySpace occupies a strange zone between public and private—as the online world is a public space not in the present tense, but in the archived tense. Similarly, one’s presence online is not real in the physical present, but becomes real and valid as it attracts attention and participation. If there is such a thing as social capital, then it is earned and spent as social currency at MySpace, and one’s presence has the value that accrues to those who can demonstrate social competence (read: flirtation).
On User Generated Content:
There are two dimensions to user-generated content: the contributor and his or her contribution. I’d put this in plain English as people and content but I’d run afoul of the slogan, popular in social software circles, that “people are the content.” Social software sites vary in their emphasis on contributors and contributions depending on what kind of system the are, and the kind of participation the site encourages. They can make people more interesting, or content. And though people lead to content and vice versa, the distinction is significant. It influences site architecture, navigation, layout, and use of sound, video, and images.
Check out the whole paper on Adrian Chan’s website Gravity7
http://www.gravity7.com/articles_G7_SxD_Social_Content-12-21-06.html
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