{"id":85,"date":"2009-01-18T01:36:15","date_gmt":"2009-01-18T05:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/archives\/km-20-and-knowledge-management-part-22-defining-%e2%80%9cweb-20%e2%80%9d-and-social-software\/"},"modified":"2009-01-18T01:36:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-18T05:36:15","slug":"km-20-and-knowledge-management-part-22-defining-%e2%80%9cweb-20%e2%80%9d-and-social-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/archives\/km-20-and-knowledge-management-part-22-defining-%e2%80%9cweb-20%e2%80%9d-and-social-software\/","title":{"rendered":"KM 2.0 and Knowledge Management: Part 22, Defining \u201cWeb 2.0\u201d and “Social Software”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fractal\"<\/p>\n

While the variations on the various 2.0 cluster memes are also beginning to proliferate as more people write about them, it is, except in the case of \u201csocial media,\u201d comparatively easy to put one\u2019s fingers on dominant definitions of these categories, because early and continuing work on each of them is more closely associated with a thinker of high prestige who has offered a preferred definition of each of the categories, than is the case for \u201cKnowledge Management.\u201d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Web 2.0<\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWeb 2.0\u201d thinking is most closely associated with Tim O\u2019Reilly, President and CEO of O\u2019Reilly Media, Inc. In his latest effort at a definition of Web 2.0 he offers:<\/a> <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I’ve elsewhere called “harnessing collective intelligence.”)”<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This definition defines Web 2.0 as a movement, but also implies a short definition of what Web 2.0 tools are. They\u2019re internet software \u201capplications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.\u201d One key idea here is that such applications view the Internet as the platform for both development and use, in contrast to Web 1.0 applications which used the Internet, but ultimately saw the PC as the platform of reference. Examples of Web 2.0 applications are by now well-known. They include applications such as Blogs, RSS Feeds, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Polling\/Voting, Collaborative Tagging, Interactive Media, Folksonomies, \u201cMashups\u201d of various kinds, and other applications too numerous to mention.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

There are problems with O\u2019Reilly\u2019s definition of Web 2.0, which I won\u2019t cover here, but I do need to note that it is inclusive enough that it might well include the coming generation of Web 3.0 tools, whose distinguishing characteristic is that they are based on the \u201cSemantic Web.\u201d<\/a> It is very likely that Web 3.0 applications will be just as oriented toward utilizing network effects and collective intelligence as Web 2.0 applications are, so, O\u2019Reilly\u2019s definition won\u2019t distinguish the two. But such a distinction is important in justifying the name Web 2.0 in the first place, since, without it, why use numerical software \u201cversion-like\u201d terminology to describe such changes at all? Why not, instead, just refer to the social web, to the semantic social web, and to the intelligent-agent enhanced semantic social web, rather than to the Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 terminology currently being used and contemplated?<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Social Software<\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Wikipedia article on social software<\/a> defines it this way: \u201cSocial software encompasses a range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data.\u201d Clay Shirky defines it this way: \u201cIt’s software that supports group interaction.\u201d<\/a> And Stowe Boyd defines it as \u201csoftware built around one or more of these premises: <\/a><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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1. Support for conversational interaction between individuals or groups \u2014 including real time and “slow time” conversation, like instant messaging and collaborative teamwork spaces, respectively. . . <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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2. Support for social feedback \u2014 which allows a group to rate the contributions of others, perhaps implicitly, leading to the creation of digital reputation . . . <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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3. Support for social networks \u2014 to explicitly create and manage a digital expression of people’s personal relationships and to help them build new relationships . . .\u201d <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though Boyd\u2019s definition is more specific than the other two, the important differences in viewpoints that exist are between the Wikipedia treatment and the accounts of Shirky and Boyd going beyond their formal definitions. In contrast to the Wikipedia account, their explications of \u201csocial software\u201d emphasize that in the modern web-based context, social software creates emergent network effects resulting from scale and self-organization that produce the true value of the software to its users. Modern social software produces emergence when its use is widespread. It creates global attributes and patterns at the system level that are truly novel. The definition of social software I\u2019ll use is: software that supports group interaction, and creates emergent network effects resulting from increasing scale and from the self-organization the software enables and supports.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the variations on the various 2.0 cluster memes are also beginning to proliferate as more people write about them, it is, except in the case of \u201csocial media,\u201d comparatively easy to put one\u2019s fingers on dominant definitions of these categories, because early and continuing work on each of them is more closely associated with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17,15,8],"tags":[653,654,657,3537,3531,655,279,36,158,400,656],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-km-20","category-km-software-tools","category-knowledge-management","tag-20-cluster-memes","tag-collective-intelligence","tag-emergent-networks","tag-km-20","tag-knowledge-management","tag-semantic-web","tag-social-media","tag-social-software","tag-web-20","tag-web-30","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmci.org\/alllifeisproblemsolving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}