Abstract
In this age of tech industry retrenchment and reorganization, and
the busting of DotCom dreams, it's surprising to learn that one
area of Web software development—now known as "social software"—is
more vibrant and active than ever. Social software refers to various,
loosely connected types of applications that allow individuals to
communicate with one another, and to track discussions across the
Web as they happen. Many forms of social software are already old
news for experienced technology users; bulletin boards, instant
messaging, online role-playing games, and even the collaborative
editing tools built into most word processing software all qualify.
But there are a whole host of new tools for discussion and collaboration,
many of them in some way tied to the rise of the Weblog (or "blog").
New content syndication and aggregation tools, collaborative virtual
workspaces, and collaborative editing tools, among others, are becoming
popular, and social software is maturing so quickly that keeping
up with it could be a full-time job in itself.
What's more, social software, especially the popular Weblog (or "blog")
publishing tools, is gaining notice by the larger players on the
Web. Google recently purchased Pyra, creator of the popular Weblog
tool Blogger, and added "Blog This!" as an option on its Google
Toolbar. AOL has announced that it will launch its own Weblog tool
for its more than thirty million subscribers this summer. Soon blogs—perhaps
the first native publishing format for the Web—may become one of
the most important prisms through which we understand the online
world, since they and their relatives in collaboration and group
discussion tools may become our primary way of interacting with
one another online.
Links and resources
Tags
community