Institute For The Future

Clay Shirky on the future of social software

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Clay Shirky is an author and consultant who has written extensively on the Internet, open source, and social software. He is also a contributor to the Many-to-Many group weblog. Here is his answer to the question I recently posed on the future of social software:

 

In 10 years, the phrase will be as outdated as a KC and the Sunshine band album. We won't need it anymore because, as you speculate, the value of social interaction will be folded into a large number of applications, sometimes as built-in features, sometimes as external services that get integrated in the manner of web services.

Looking back, the phrase 'social software' has served three functions.

First, it called attention to an explosion of new work that was otherwise seemingly unrelated: at first glance, del.icio.us isn't like Meetup isn't like Socialtext. The label made it both possible and fruitful to examine those similarities, and to imagine how applications like those might be combined or extended.

Second, by making sociability rather than newness the organizing principle, it helped link the current work to the 3 previous decades of work, from PLATO through mailing lists to now, and made it obvious that the early work of writers like Barry Wellman, Chip Morningstar, and Randall Farmer should be part of the conversation. It made the available literature for the conversation much larger than "Look what Friendster is doing this week!"

Third, it specified social interaction as a class of value rather than as a class of application. Some email supports social interaction; some email is spam. Some weblogs are host to social value, others function as media outlets, with no other interactivity. Running a weblog like a publication is no better or worse than running it as a conversation, but it's a different kind of thing. (You could see this tension in the acquisition of LiveJournal by Moveable Type. Though the word 'weblog' covers both services, the blogging on LJ is far more conversation, and on MT far more publication-oriented, leading to speculation of culture clash.)

By calling attention to social value, it's easier to see where that value might arise in existing applications. It also helps undo the puritanical "info processor/ productivity improver" attitude we often have, or claim to have, with regard to our devices. Presenting social software as a real design center, instead of an afterthought of the "I use my computer to access kinds of serious business research (and to IM with my girlfriend)" variety makes it easier to see what some good next moves might be.

 

That's where the conversation is today, and that's why I think the phrase social software will fade away over time, as the idea of looking for social value in all kinds of applications, like the current conversation swirling around social tagging and how that might affect knowledge management, is going to become a normal part of design practice.

 

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