Social software

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Social media landscape 2010
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Contents

Introduction

See also Social Media Glossary, Social networking and Web 2.0

The term social software refers to online tools that are used to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with others on the web; in 2010, these tools are also known as social media or Web 2.0 tools). Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video; popular social software include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs. Social media is designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. It has been suggested that Metcalfe's law - the more people who use something, the more valuable it becomes - applies to social tools. This phenomenon is also known as crowdsourcing and "wisdom of the crowds". Some prominent examples of social software include Wikipedia (general reference tool), MySpace, LinkedIn and Gather.com] (social networking),YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), Flickr (photo sharing) and Miniclip (game sharing). These sites use technologies such as Blogs, podcasts, Wikis, and vlogs to help facilitate user interaction and collaboration.

Aggregators and feedreaders

Blog applications

Current awareness

Directories

Discussion lists

Instant Messaging Clients

Library wikis

Open source wikis

Wiki hosting

Bookmarking

  • del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site where you can organise, share and read others bookmarks. A tag is simply a word you use to describe a bookmark. Unlike folders, you make up tags when you need them and you can use as many as you like. The result is a better way to organize your bookmarks and a great way to discover interesting things on the Web.
  • Diigo (dee'go) combines social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, easy sharing and interactions. It provides a rich social platform for knowledge users and turns the web into writable, participatory and interactive media.
  • Trailfire enables you to discover the web through the expertise of others. Follow a trail and find what you need. Or share your own expertise by making a trail of web pages. Making trails is easy. Place a 'trail mark' (like a 'post-it' note) on a page with your comments. A trail mark can contain text, images, videos and other media types.

Content management

  • b2evolution is a free blog tool for the next generation of blogs. It includes all the features of traditional blog tools, and extends them with evolved features such as file & photo management, advanced skinning, multiple blogs support as well as detailed user permissions.
  • Bloglines is an aggregator that allows you to create a single page for updates from your favourite blogs, comics, newsgroups etc.
  • Drupal is equipped with a powerful blend of features, and can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.
  • Edublogs is a free blog hosting tool for education purposes. It is particularly useful if you want to set up a blog for multiple users (classroom) as opposed to an individual student or instructor.
  • Elgg is an open source software platform designed to allow people to easily connect and share resources. Elgg Spaces allows you to create social networks like MySpace for your school/institution. You decide if the network is private or public.
  • Journler is a daily notebook and entry based information manager. Scholars, teachers, students, professors, scientists, thinkers, the business minded and writers of every persuasion use it on a daily basis to connect the written word with the media (video and images) most important to them.
  • Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities.It is also used to host online conferences.
  • TakingITGlobal.org is a Canadian online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities.
  • Tapped In is an online workplace for a community of education professionals. K-12 teachers, librarians, administrators, and professional development staff, as well as university faculty, students, and researchers gather here to learn, collaborate, share, and support one another.
  • Thinkature is a collaborative workspace to which you can invite coworkers, friends, and colleagues to join you in just seconds. Once inside your workspace, you can communicate by chatting, drawing, creating cards, and adding content from around the Internet.
  • Worldbridges is a community of communities that use 'homegrown webcasting' and other new media technologies to help people learn.
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