We are social animals for whom networked software is creating a new kind of habitat. Social software can be defined as whatever
supports our actual human interaction as we colonize the virtual realm. The category includes familiar things such as groupware
and knowledge management, and extends to the new breed of relationship power tools that have brought the venture capitalists
out of hibernation.
Computer-mediated communication is the lifeblood of social software. When we use e-mail, instant messaging, Weblogs, and wikis,
we’re potentially free to interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. But there’s a trade off. Our social protocols map poorly
to TCP/IP. Whether the goal is to help individuals create and share knowledge or to enrich the relationship networks that
support sales, collaboration, and recruiting, the various kinds of enterprise social software aim to restore some of the
context that’s lost when we move our interaction into the virtual realm.
In networked environments, everything we do can be monitored. Absent the natural cues that establish social context — it’s
hard to see groups form at the water cooler or hear voices in the hallway through e-mail or IM — social software systems ask
us to strike a bargain. If individuals agree to work transparently, they (and their employers) can know more, do more, and
sell more.
For many people, the required level of transparency will take some getting used to. “Our customers now include Lockheed Martin,
Northrop Grumman, Morgan Stanley, and intelligence agencies,” says David Gilmour, CEO of Tacit Knowledge Systems. “And they
all have come to believe this technology that watches and compiles — for the benefit of the individual — is going to become
a permanent backdrop and the dominant paradigm for enterprise software.”
What Tacit’s ActiveNet watches and compiles are the e-mail messages and documents written by knowledge workers. Its mission:
to ensure that no two people whose document trails reveal a mutual interest in making a connection fail to miss one another.
“But it’s not our job to force you to work together,” Gilmour says. Users’ content remains private; the ActiveNet connection
broker works only with explicit consent.
Of course, we humans don’t always need to discover new collaborators. We’re already members of teams. Within those teams,
there isn’t a one-size-fits-all social protocol. Outspoken individuals author the blogs popping up on corporate intranets.
But other team members may prefer to contribute to a wiki, which is a collaborative space for Web writing. Ross Mayfield is
CEO of Socialtext, a company whose hosted workspaces support both modes. “A blog enables people to express their identity,”
he says, “while a wiki page de-emphasizes the individual and emphasizes the collective understanding of the group.”
The same person may find both modes useful in different ways. Adam Hertz, VP of technology strategy at Ofoto, uses Socialtext
to coordinate his development team. During a period when he was traveling a lot, he says he started an internal blog to keep
his team updated on his outside activities. It was helpful, but was unnecessary after he rejoined the team.
The Social Life of Content
Whatever the mode of communication, the primary goal, Hertz says, is to create group memory. Chris Nuzum, CTO and co-founder
of Traction Software (infoworld.com/1054), echoes that theme. Traction describes its offering as “enterprise Weblog software,”
but Nuzum says that a typical Traction project is more of a group effort than an individual journal. As such, a lot of the
social interaction that would otherwise occur in e-mail moves into the comments and discussions attached to the project.
Building group memory and team awareness has always been the goal of KM (knowledge management), of course. “But most people,”
Nuzum says, “have never had the benefit of mechanized institutional memory.” One reason for this limitation is that KM systems
have tended to ask people to dump knowledge into databases without regard for social incentives, habits, or consequences.
These are central concerns for social software in all its various forms.
Think about how people behave in a face-to-face meeting. Now consider this report from Ethan Schoonover, Asian e-business
director at Lowe + Draft, about his use of Groove workspaces to manage meetings online. “It’s not enough to know that 100
other anonymous intranet users are logged in,” he says. “I want to know who is present in the space, who is online but lingering
outside the space, able to be called in by ‘hollering into the hallway,’ who is sending nonverbal cues by rummaging through
papers.”
Group formation is not only a social process, it’s often a political one, too. During the Iraq war, there was a compelling
demonstration of Groove’s unique ability to enable groups to form across political boundaries. Eric Rasmussen, a physician
and naval officer, worked with the U.S. government’s CENTCOM (Central Command) in Kuwait City, Basra, and Baghdad, delivering
IT support for various humanitarian efforts. In one key information-gathering operation, he says, “We converted the paper
form into a Groove form and then asked the major players (DoD [Department of Defense], State, USAID [United States Agency
for International Development], several UN agencies, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], Kuwaitis, Saudis, Brits, and U.S.
Civil Affairs teams) to download Groove ... and invited them into the space.”
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