Ross Mayfield Chairman, President and Co-founde November 2007
Oct 17, 2014
Ross MayfieldChairman, President and Co-founderNovember 2007
Made of People
(also made of people)
Social Software is Made of People• Bottom up • Augmentation, not automation• Gets out of the way• Share control of information architecture
Social Software adapts to its environment rather than requiring its environment to adapt to it (circa 2002)
Complexity is in the social network
Vendors tried to put it in the software
Social Software keeps complexity in the social network. Where it belongs. Only encoding simple rules to yield emergence
Search
Linking
Authoring
Tagging
Extensions
Signals
Enterprise 2.0 is freeform social software adapted for organizations -- Andrew McAfee
The greatest pattern of Web 2.0 is sharing control to create value
Only one problem
Well, maybe two
Innovation in Social Software began with open source
Commons-Based Peer Production, Benkler:• Markets drive production through price signal• Firms drive production through contracts• Social networks are driven through social signals
Decoupling Decisions
The most important decisions cannot be automated
Sharing control over information can lead to more productive decision processes, and better decisions
Sharing control over decisions for enterprises is primarily for social goods
Social Goods
Social Goods are created when the means of production and/or distribution is broadly available• Price trends towards free• Knowledge is distributed
In these gift economies, or social markets, consider sharing control over decisions• Valuation and distribution is social
Markets are social
Implications for Process
For a given business process• What if we made it more transparent?• What if we made it more participatory?
For social goods, participation can include those outside the firewall• The best experts on your products not on payroll• The hidden experts can volunteer outside their
job description
WorkParticipation
Brittanica
ShareParticipation
Open
Participation
Wikipedia
To get the benefits of sharing control and being open, you have to move towards transparency
Socialtext ranked as most visionary vendor
Socialtext recognized as leading Enterprise 2.0 company in terms of ability to execute – behind only IBM, Microsoft & BEA
Socialtext also part of Intel’s SuiteTwo bundle, which scored as more visionary than any other vendor
Gartner identifies 'social software‘ as one of top 10 strategic technologies for 2008
Social Software is Made of People• To be implicit is human • Augmentation, not automation• Some decisions should not be coded• Make software, and sharing in work,
more like a cocktail party…