The roots of social software

Social Software Predecessors

As Koch (2008) points out, the roots of social software go back into the 1940s when Vannevar Bush developed the concept of “Memex” an information system that was designed to support the human mind in its capacity to make associations (p. 38). Though “Memex” was a technical utopia at the time it has inspired many software architects and some of its principles have resulted into actual technologies like hypertext, which is the basis of internet websites (cp. HTML; Muenz, n.d.).

In his blog post about the evolution of social software Allen (2004) reports that the first implementation of collaborative software took place in the 1970s when major US American companies (IBM, AT&T) as well as state agencies initiated a project called Electronic Information Exchange Systems (EIES) which had the mission to build the first office automation tools. In the 1980s these kind of collaborative tools were enhanced to support group work and consequently referred to as “Groupware”.

Scientists with backgrounds in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information systems (IS) were interested in this new kinds of technologies and how they affected work-processes but not content with the term “Groupware” for research so they united under the name and research field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) (Allen, 2004 “1970s Electronic Information Exchange Systems”). The relevant theoretical concepts and results of CSCW for Social Software Suites will be discussed in (REFERENCE). For now it is sufficient to point out the paradigm shift and the new challenges that arose with the emergence of Groupware. As Marca and Book declared in 1992 Groupware was not an evolutionary step in the history of Information Technology but

“a conceptual shift a shift in our understanding. The traditional computing paradigm sees a computer as a tool for manipulating and exchanging data. The Groupware paradigm, on the other hand views the computer as a shared space in which people collaborate; a clear shift in the relationship of people and information”

(Marca & Book, as cited in Koch, 2008, p.40). Koch adds that the combination of the social component (group) to the human-computer interaction increased the complexity of software immensely and has resulted in many failures. The key to a successful implementation of collaborative software is the integration of the social system and the technical system but it is very hard to achieve because social, political, organizational and motivational issues play a major role and have to be managed carefully.

The most successful groupware has been Email. It’s success is due to its similarity to traditional mail which persons had been used to before and its direct value to each individual user which ensured a high participation rate from the very beginning up to the point where it was no longer possible to avoid email as a medium.

Though originally being defined very broadly, Groupware today is often equalized with Microsoft Outlook/Exchange (LOTUS Notes) functionality like email, shared calendar and tasks. In contrast to Groupware which was developed specifically for group collaboration within companies social software emerged in the open web with a focus on the individual user.

While in Groupware a certain number of people is directed (top-down) to collaborate for a limited period of time, an unlimited number of people is voluntarily (bottom-up) participating in an ongoing conversation (e.g. Blogosphere) or collaboration (e.g. Wikipedia) for an unlimited period of time in social software.

Thus it makes sense to differentiate between social software and groupware like on the chart below that displays Groupware and Social Software formats & functionality: