A number of people have asked me recently “do you know what’s a good social networking platform? We want to [fill in blank here, ranging from specialized dating service to community of practice]”.
I have thought about this before, though more from the perspective of what would be incorporated into a social computing platform. It’s certainly been a topic of the blogosphere for a while now (see Dare Obasanjo ). According to wikipedia) : “In computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. Typical platforms include a computer’s architecture, operating system, or programming languages and their runtime libraries”. Extrapolating from this definition, a social computing platform would provide a framework using web 2.0 technologies allowing social entities to run. It would include a basic social architecture with services and APIs that assume distributed persons, groups, and networks who want to communicate, create content, and collaborate.
I browsed around today, and see there are a number of tools out there that allow some custom creation of social networks. One notable one is Ning. However I would not call this a platform any more than Yahoo or MSN Groups are platforms. It allows people to create niche communities, using a network rather than group model for defining relationships. SNAPP and Webcrossing appear to be structured more along the lines of an actual platform, however they are offered as hosted services. Social Platform advertises an enterprise-grade, white label solution. They say they are a platform “that customers can extent and build on”. Their feature set looks great, however again they have all the appearances of being more of a hosted service. ClicMobile is another company that supposedly provides “white-labelled solutions to online communities, telecom operators, media companies and content owners.” While I like their mobile emphasis I could not see from browsing around their site if they are a real platform or not.
A bona fide platform provides the framework and libraries to enable rapid development but also gives developers complete control, ownership, and customizability. It does not require an ongoing relationship with a hosted service. From my discussions with various interested parties, people are looking for more control than is currently available from most “platforms” out there. In that respect, this one looked promising: Elgg, an open source social networking platform. It’s a very good sign when they have plugins, developer docs, and a big “download” button. I’d be curious to hear from anyone who’s used it. On the whole, I’d say the industry is too young to know what will emerge as an industry standard.
Here are the features I would look for in a social computing platform:
- Person embodiment:
- Registration / log in
- Profile
- Content creation:
- Blogs and subscription tools
- Static content modules (wiki, home pages)
- Photo and video uploading and reviewing module
- Licensing tools
- Relationships:
- Contact/friend list, with a uni- or bidirectional handshake option
- Groups
- Invitations
- Member directory
- Communication:
- Instant messaging
- Commenting
- Discussion groups
- Messaging, in system with extra-system email integration option
- File sharing
- Mobile integration (WAP, SMS, email to SMS gateway)
- Privacy and sharing models (by object, by relationships)
- Reputation mechanisms:
- Activity metrics
- Contribution metrics
- Explicit ratings
- Overview/navigation:
- Hierarchical semantic trees
- Tag clouds
- Activity module, what’s new in system
- Search and filters:
- Indexing both people and content
- Advanced search tools filtering by person and content
- Result sets modifiable
- Analysis for prioritiation tools, such as collaborative filtering
- Events
- Personalization:
- At individual and group level
- Customizable style sheets
- Bad behavior/moderation tools:
- three strikes your out
- roles, newbie, mentor
- assigned moderators
- Bookmarking and social tagging tool
