I recommend reading Danah Boyd's entire post. It raises some interesting points.
When I listen to clients and vendors discuss social software, the applications are frequently semi-formal where social structures are explicitly defined and employee participation is directed in some manner by a business process. Often, the need to be so purposeful when laying out the benefits of social applications is to support the need to deliver a business case with some expected ROI. Decisions on the design and deployment of social applications can be influenced by management's expectations of enabling certain outcomes (e.g., expertise location, communities of practice, professional support networks or improved talent management). I don't disagree with that approach, but I think we also need to think beyond the purposeful aspects of social applications. How do we create social contexts that catalyze emergent activities and serendipitous interaction?
Danah raises a valid point that clicked in my head as follows: will business analysts and IT groups involved in requirements gathering and design activities "take the social out of social applications" by trying to make them too efficient and too reliable? Should architects of social applications embrace some degree of imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness?
valuing inefficiencies and unreliability
Two deeply embedded values in the world of technology development are efficiency and reliability. Companies pride themselves in maximizing efficiency and reliability and, for the most part, consumers agree. We like when our search engines produce results quickly and reliably. Yet, when it comes to social technologies, I suspect that efficiency and reliability are not the ideal metrics.
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Social technologies that make things more efficient reduce the cost of action. Yet, that cost is often an important signal. We want communication to cost something because that cost signals that we value the other person, that we value them enough to spare our time and attention. Cost does not have to be about money. One of the things that I've found to be consistently true with teens of rich and powerful parents is that they'd give up many of the material goods in their world to actually get some time and attention from their overly scheduled parents. Time and attention are rare commodities in modern life. Spending time with someone is a valuable signal that you care.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that tech architects never even think about the possibility of creating inefficiencies to enhance social good, but I'm not sure. Since many of you mysterious readers are passionate about social technology, let me ask you. What examples of intentional (or unintentional) inefficiencies do you see in social tech? How do users respond to these?
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