All Software Should Be Social

I had lunch with Marc Canter yesterday and told him that one of the most important thoughts that I came across last year was his assertion that "all software must be social". I can't find the specific post where he said that or I'd link to it.

Since reading that, I can barely use software that doesn't have other people in it. I want profiles and faces and connections. I want to see what others are doing with the software. I want to connect and be connected.

It might be as simple as a text editor in which Brad and Andrew are connected to me. It might be as complicated as Facebook. It really doesn't matter. If there aren't faces and profiles, the software is less useful to me.

This was all rattling around in my brain when I read Brad Stone's piece on Social Networking's Next Phase in the NY Times today. In that piece Brad talks about the sale of Tribe to Cisco. I am an investor in Tribe so I am not going to say anything about that deal.

I have been wanting distributed social nets for a long time now. MySpace provides very little value to me. Same with Facebook. But MyBlogLog provides a lot more. Not because it's a social net focused on my demo, but because its a meta social net made up of lots of smaller social nets.

Clay Shirky once said that social nets are like parties. When they are small, they are really great, when they get big and crowded, they cease to be useful. Again I can't find that post, or I'd link to it.

Clay's right. But a huge social net that's made up of millions of smaller social nets is likely to be even more useful than anything that we currrently have.

I think the web has to become a social net. It's on its way, but we don't have a single profile (my blog is mine) that we can use everywhere. Not all software is social. Not all social software can handle a single distributed profile. I could go on and on. Marc and I did yesterday at lunch.

Brad Stone is right. Open and distributed networks are the future of social networks. They will be everywhere. But we can't and won't have hundreds of profiles. We need a single "name space" for profiles. That's going to happen. MySpace and Facebook will fight it just like AOL and Prodigy didn't embrace the web. But it's unstoppable because the value that will accrue to the entire social web will be incredible when we get there.

Comments

[carl rahn griffith]

absolutely. i have lost track of how many social networks i have registered with - keeping my options open that one of them will evolve into what i'd like it to be; pretty much as you describe.

if one of them could visualize the context, chronology and intensity of a (eg) topic (via colours/shapes/sizes types of ergonomics) that'd be a start.

of all those i have registered with, for me, mybloglog is the most relevant followed by facebook and linkedin - there is something about facebook i like - it seems a potentialy better platform; certainly it's a hell of a lot better designed than the dour linkedin (the ebay of the social networking world). second life i find utterly ridiculous, frankly.

it's a fascinating area and why so many 'pundits' are still cynical of its relevance i don't know - it's highly significant already even though it's very immature still. progress in the areas i - and you - cite seems very slow, however.

odd.

[Jeff]

I have to add this first. I thought it was finny when I mistakenly double clicked on Brad Stone's name and Answer came up. It asked if I wanted Brad stone the journalist or Brad Stone the porn star.

I would agree with you that something will come along and give us that 1 site to post everything and keep track of it all. A OpenId on steroids. Shameless Plug: That is what we are trying to do with MobaTalk. Although, the initial way that we are going to get users is through the blog plugin, we hope that we will gain interest from news organizations and social networks. Try out the plugin by clicking my name. But, we have on the back and the storage of everything you do within the MobaTalk network. All of your multi media comments will be stored for you and you will be able to use them anyway you want on any MobaTalk enabled site. It is about expanding the networks and making them cross functional.

[Mike Sabat]

Funny that you mention the whole Internet being one social network. I saw a presentation a week ago on dai.sy. Daisy installs social networking tools in your browser, and you can connect (chat, blog, share files) with people that are on the same website.

It's very new and I haven't quite figured it out yet, but that is where they are focused.

[Brian Oberkirch]

Fred: I'm also intrigued by the powerful idea of URL-based identity and portable social network. I tried to sum up some of that thinking in this post.

[Jason L. Baptiste]

Fred, you talk a lot about the consumer space with mybloglog,facebook,etc., but how do you see the enterprise and office space becoming social? I think the real winner over the next few years will be the enterprise and business side of things. The impact of social software on the enterprise side will produce a lot more change than the consumer side at the end of the day.

-JLB

[Alex Iskold]

I agree with that. I think it is also important to distinguish social software from the software with the sole purpose of socializing.

In the case when we produce stuff, we need software which is smart about collaboration, which is not quite the same as social software.

Alex

[Ben Werdmuller]

I agree - but it can go a lot further than MyBlogLog.

With Explode, a service we're experimenting with, you can add people as friends no matter what service they're a member of. MySpace users can be friends with PeopleAggregator users can be friends with Wordpress blog authors.

But on top of that, we've integrated OpenID, which we believe is going to come into its own this year as a way to allow people to log into various networks with one central identity. Our implementation allows a user's OpenID to point back to the page they feel most represents them, wherever it occurs on the web.

Further to that, we've implemented cross-network messaging in the shape of public comments and "nudges" - messages that only your mutual friends can see. And we're experimenting with a ping-based user search which means you can, again, find people relating to your interests wherever they exist on the web (as well as the people most similar to you, no matter which network they're a part of).

That's what we're doing this month - our plans for the future are even bigger.

Niche networks and specialised software with social aspects are the future, but just as search engines are important for the wider web, metanetworks are going to be important for social networking. We want to push that envelope; MyBlogLog is very much only the start.

[Sylvain Carle]

I think you might be referring to "A Group Is Its Own Worts Ennemy" [1] when you are quoting Clay Shirky.

Reading it and seeing how insightful it still is 4 years later gives a good idea of how sharp he is.

There's a great quote near the end of the article :

"Now, I say 'handles', because I don't want to say 'identity', because identity has suddenly become one of those ideas where, when you pull on the little thread you want, this big bag of stuff comes along with it. Identity is such a hot-button issue now, but for the lightweight stuff required for social software, its really just a handle that matters."

That's quite contrary to the actual common thinking going on, but thinking about it, OpenID is really "just a handle"...

1. http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

[Chris Saad]

I agree Fred,

I remember at the Web 2.2 conference last year there was a discussion about social networks and how we could all reach each other.

I made the comment that Blogs were the ultimate form of social network and tools like MyBlogLog and Technorati were the ultimate connecting fabric.

My point is that people are people irrespective of the tools they use to express themselves.

Social networks should exist on top of the expression platforms - not within them.

And blogs+discovery/social overlay tools are the purest expression of that.

What's need next is a unified way to declare our interests (and later connect those too) - and I think that APML will be the best way to do that (www.apml.org).

[Geoff Hickman]

Hey Fred,

What would your one profile look like. What would it include?

[Darren Johnson]

I completely agree. It's interesting how quickly the product development process has started to move from standard PRD's (Product Requirement Docs) to social outreach and involvement in the early stages of the product lifecycle. In terms of community, it is really cool to be a part of the social movement into mainstream business. Five years ago Apple moved Design into the limelight of product development - the next big thing is community (you see traces of it starting with the Zune, etc.)

[Tom]

What about taking a bottom up approach and building communities based on common knowledge/interests- such as job titles and responsibilities? Start small, label yourself as "something" and use this as your tag as you move through social sites. We are working to build something analogous to what VerticalNet built in the dot com boom years. Our tool is an aggregator that allows the user to drilling down into smaller miniworks based on their job title, skills, unique job problems, etc...It's clear to us that your work can define you (not your company) so why not use this as a way to define yourself?

[AlFromChicago]

Fred --

Spot on. As someone who started and ran a business all about building commmunities for companies in the late 90s -- today is all about leveraging the existing community technology out there to provide great services to your consumers. And the other point here is you need scale -- under the 10/1 rule of 10% are generally active participants and 1% are contributors to any community -- it's very tough to build out effective online communities/social nets that are closed. What MyBlogLog provides is that scale -- use their technology and services to add value to your users -- but take advantage of their large user base to make it happen as we are doing now on BuzzTracker.com.

The new winners in the publisher and content owner space will start by assuming that the profiles and tags will be out there -- and will start thinking about how they can develop unique web services that marry that social information with unique content, insight, and transactional ability. It won't be by copying MySpace for their user base.

[Karl]

Great post :)

I wrote a piece, on my personal blog, titled "Social software can't be a fad since the WEB is social software" back on September 1st last year.

The Internet, and the Web, were built for the purposes of collaboration, and communication. It stands to reason that the most successful services on the web have largely been participatory and will continue to be so.

I tend to think that the availability of universal profiles doesn't make the web more social - just more convenient.

[Doug K.]

Again our thinking converges even though we don't know each other. Today you said this, "Open and distributed networks are the future of social networks."

Here is what I said on a post in November 2006:

"The future of the web is using one of its strengths and creating distributed communities. These are communities that flow across websites. They are ubiquitous, existing wherever you are across the web."

I even went so far as to call it 'Web 3.0' because I think it will have a dramatic impact on the web when it occurs. I have been watching OpenID closely because I believe it is one of the critical components that will make this little social networking snowball into a snow boulder (that's what we used to call huge, man-sized snow balls we made as kids in the mid-west winters).

Here is the url:
http://www.allbusiness.com/business-planning-structures/starting-a-business/3882-1.html?postId=7669

[angela]

Fred,

Another avenue of social networks is in the world of nonprofit giving. I'm part of a team of people developing the website www.ChangingThePresent.org.

It is a marketplace of donation giving where you can go to fund an hour of social research, or protect an area of wilderness, spay a cat,...

The intersting part is that we are building a social networking component to it. Right now, people can build profiles, wishlists, registries, make comments...essentially create an identity as an individual philanthropist. It is in the beginning stages--more networking capabilities are being added all the time. Soon we will have blogs and the ability to create communities.

Take a feel the social aspect will make giving more compelling for people?

[Gareth]

Actually there are some attempts to do just that. I completely agree, and made a similar point bewailing the lack of aggregation between social networks on my blog yesterday. Videntity allows you to create a relationship between your profile and any other web page, and socialurl is attempting something similar. Tbh OpenID is the key to a universal profile, which is why I like videntity, but it needs to be prettier, and there needs to be deeper integration (i.e. comments/pictures/descriptions all linking back and forth as well as auto blog input etc.)

[Kevin Farnham]

Doesn't OpenID address the problem of a single "name space" for profiles?

If you go to openid.aol.com/YourAimScreenName, you are brought to that AIM user's AIM Page, which is your default profile (it can be customized) if you choose to use AOL as your OpenID service provider.