DevelopingForSocialNetworkingSites

From SPA Wiki

As a case study, this session didn't really create any outputs as such but we did get side tracked into a few discussions.

Maps of social software

We attempted to roughly order the list of social software provided by the attendees in terms of the degree to which they understood the main users identity, their relationships (the so-called social graph) and offered services to them/the graph/used the graph in services.

JaneChandler threw in "Second Life" which I had initially (due to inexperience of it) position to one-side as it wasn't the real "person" being captured there. Jane however pointed out that in "I Avatar"1 Mark Meadows argues that Second Life was actually the utlimate Social Application since (a) for all the "real" information social network profiles they are still really just "avatars" for the real person and (b) there is increasing integration between people existence in Second Life with real information about them on the Internet in general and social networks in particular

Privacy concerns

Towards the end of the session (and a bit after it) we discussed the implications of the "everythings out there for everyone to see" nature of the current Social Networks. (Those working in education present in the discussion are finding themselves trying to caution students about the dangers of postings made in the fun of student lives coming back to haunt them in later days). I did point out that some Social Networks (noteably Plaxo) were specifically trying to separate out and manage different groups/circles of friends. Also even Facebook had recently released the idea of "groups" of Friends which currently had little function but I predicted it would be used to control privacy options. Well gues what, I should have put some money on it as the very next day they announced just this 2.

Other links JeremyWhiting was commenting on the annoying number of adverts on Facebook and made us aware of an ad-blocker you can use in Firefox that works with Facebook. The URL for that is here3.

JaneChandler very kindly provided some other links that may be of interest to people

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-06-23--periodic-table-of-the-internet.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/1805709102/in/photostream/

You may also find Emma Duke-Williams blog interesting as she regularly blogs on social applications (as well as educational only ones): http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/ 4