Introduction
The promise of social software is that it allows for social relations in cyberspace that are nearly as rich and meaningful as those in real life. These services have in common that they provide functionality to communicate, to interact, or to form relationships in one way or the other. We have also seen people using established services like blogs, forums or wikis to create and maintain groups and group memberships. It seems that people use whatever they have at their disposal when it comes to engaging in social activity.
According eleconomista.com.mx (http://eleconomista.com.mx/tecnociencia/2012/04/09/mexico-lider-crecimiento-redes-sociales ) Social networking has had a very rapid growth curve, because people spend enough time using them. The use of social networks in Mexico grew 18% in 2012, led by Facebook, which would make the country one of the fastest growing markets in these platforms worldwide, according to estimates from eMarketer. "Internet users in Mexico are migrating to social networks, making them their favorite means of expression and source of entertainment. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube lead the use of social networks and are expected to develop economically brands while accessing a highly connected audience," said digital research firm eMarketer. And is that social networks are increasingly used by companies to promote their business and reach out to consumers.
A Soft Systems Methodology approach
Soft Systems Methodology is a qualitative, interpretative methodology that is particularly suited for the analysis of complex, ill-defined situations where there are divergent views about the definition of the problem, while the reasoning strategy of this methodology is centered around model building and testing.
Build a conceptual model that unravels the broad concept of sociality into four domains: the realms of enabling practice, mimicking reality, building identity and actualizing self. The conceptual model helps us understand and describe how these areas each have their own different mechanisms that trigger social behavior. By using the concepts of our conceptual model, we subsequently develop a tentative design framework consisting of design domains, design criteria, design parameters and design dilemmas with the goal of providing directions for practitioners in the field of social software. Finally, we confront the current state of affairs in social software with our conceptual model, illustrating the various concepts by case descriptions of well known social software services.
Sociality and Social Software Systems
Sociality refers to the tendency to associate with or form social groups. Sociality is a derivative of biological anthropology practices, to understand how creatures organize their relations. Human sociality is thus about how actors relate to each other to organize their social practices and construe their identities.
Types of sociality
Group-based (People form groups by relating directly to each other)
-One-dimensional (Strongly focusing on a particular aspect of a social group)
-Multi-dimensional (referring to more complex social relationships including
various processes of negotiation, participation and sense making over time)
-Artifact-based interactions (A perceptible object situated between people acts as a
connector)
The four modes of sociality are in our view equally important in describing and understanding the various ways in which people form or engage in social groups. Of these modes, system-centered sociality is the most complex and least understood, and at the same time the most relevant given the increasing role for social software in connecting people to their various groups. Therefore, system-centered sociality, mediated by social software systems, is the object of our study. It is also the central concept in the conceptual model that underlies our social theory of software design.
A Conceptual Model
Following another central concept in the work of Wenger (1998), we develop our conceptual model further to include the above dualities of structure and experience, and practice and identity by creating realms on the diagonal axis, representing design areas to be included. These realms are spaces of co-existence, in the sense that they are spaces that are commonly overlooked or taken for granted and conceal information crucial to developing an understanding of what humans are (Sloterdijk 2006). The resulting conceptual model is depicted in Figure 2.
In general, they refer to the overall concept of the model as the realm of sociality. This realm combines all perspectives on sociality from the main theoretical points of view. On the duality between social structure and practice (Giddens 1984), we identify the realm of enabling practice. It indicates the domain in which the social software system operates to support and enable a social practice that exists – or sometimes could or even should exist – in the real world. A well known example is social networking, which is a real practice easily translated into software practice. Other examples include wikis, aimed at opinion making or knowledge sharing, and storytelling as supported by blogs (Hoogenboom et al. 2007). While the realm of enabling practice indicates what social phenomenon is being supported by a social software system, the realm of mimicking reality expresses how this is achieved. For instance, the concept of ‘digging’ a certain something, which is slang for appreciating or understanding something, exists as well in the real world as in the social software of Digg.com. This resembles what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) refer to as ‘metaphors we live by’. From our research we learned that people actually are more inclined to use software systems that resemble their daily routines, language and practices than to adopt whole new concepts, interfaces and methods.
Towards sociality driven design
We aim for a deeper understanding of the contribution of the multifaceted concept of sociality towards the work of social software designers. How does the concept of sociality contribute to the design of social software systems?
The answer to that question has been formulated in terms of our conceptual model as well as in our design framework. In the conceptual model, four realms relating to the broad concept of sociality have been identified: enabling practice, mimicking reality, building identity and actualizing self. These four realms allow for a more complete perspective on social software, a perspective encompassing theoretical views on practice, identity, social structure and situated experience. Combining these perspectives, designers should be able to design and develop software concepts that are relevant, interesting and bear resemblance to the real world. In the design framework, we have expanded the traditional design kit filled with the usual tools for sharing and connecting such as tagging, blogging and collaborative editing, by incorporating design principles, parameters, criteria and dilemmas stemming from the four sociality realms described. A designer can use these insights to create social software more systematically and more rooted in theory. In the end, it is not social software as such that determines its social-ness, but people choosing freely to use this software to engage in social relationships.
Conclusion
Staff in my review, I found very interesting to note the sociability but a platform, such as social networks. People are who generate all the information and if they can make use of technology to perform everyday activities, such as meeting people, do business, get publicity, recommendations and an endless number of advantages to be gained through sociability.
EMarketer's projections show that Facebook just reached a base of 25.6 million users in Mexico at the end of 2012. According to eMarketer estimates, India will be the largest economy rebound in the number of users in social networks with a growth rate of 51.7 percent. India:51.7% Indonesia:51.6% China:19.9% Mexico:17.9% Brazil:14.4%
It is important to mention that if there methodologies, models and frameworks that can be taken as a reference, results in a benefit to most appropriate way to take advantage of social networking designs, as in the above cases could be observed that not all networks are properly designed social or catagorias certain criteria and relationships are not well understood.
References
El economista.com.mx, http://eleconomista.com.mx/tecnociencia/2012/04/09/mexico-lider-crecimiento-redes-sociales
Giddens, A., The Constitution of Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1984
Hoogenboom, T., M. Kloos, W. Bouman and R. Jansen, “Sociality and Learning in Social Software,” International Journal on Knowledge and Learning (3:2), 2007 (forthcoming)
Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, The University of Chicago Press, London, 1980
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