Social computing
Encyclopedia
Social computing is a general term for an area of computer science
that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior
and computational systems. It has become an important concept for use in business. It is used in two ways as detailed below.
In the weaker sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting any sort of social behavior in or through computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email
, instant messaging
, social network service
s, wiki
s, social bookmarking
and other instances of what is often called social software
illustrate ideas from social computing, but also other kinds of software applications where people interact socially.
In the stronger sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting “computations” that are carried out by groups of people, an idea that has been popularized in James Surowiecki
's book, The Wisdom of Crowds
. Examples of social computing in this sense include collaborative filtering
, online auctions, prediction market
s, reputation systems, computational social choice, tagging, and verification games. The Social Information Processing
page focuses on this sense of social computing.
Social computing has become more widely known because of its relationship to a number of recent trends. These include the growing popularity of social software
and Web 2.0
, increased academic interest in social network analysis, the rise of open source
as a viable method of production, and a growing conviction that all of this can have a profound impact on daily life. A February 13, 2006 paper by market research
company Forrester Research
suggested that:
The premise of social computing is that it is possible to design digital systems that support useful functionality by making socially produced information available to their users. This information may be provided directly, as when systems show the number of users who have rated a review as helpful or not. Or the information may be provided after being filtered and aggregated, as is done when systems recommend a product based on what else people with similar purchase history have purchased. Or the information may be provided indirectly, as is the case with Google's page rank algorithms which orders search results based on the number of pages that (recursively) point to them. In all of these cases, information that is produced by a group of people is used to provide or enhance the functioning of a system. Social computing is concerned with systems of this sort and the mechanisms and principles that underlie them.
Social computing can be defined as follows:
, this generally refers to the use of social computing in corporate intranets and in other medium- and large-scale business environments.
Negotiation between agents (software agents as well as humans) allows cooperative and competitive sharing of information to determine a proper price.
Recent research and practice has also shown that electronic negotiation is beneficial for the coordination of complex interactions among organizations. Electronic negotiation has recently emerged as a very dynamic, interdisciplinary research area covering aspects from disciplines such as Economics
, Information Systems
, Computer Science
, Communication Theory
, Sociology
and Psychology
.
called NewsReport, which supported content submitted by the user community as well as written by editors and reporters.
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior
Social behavior
In physics, physiology and sociology, social behavior is behavior directed towards society, or taking place between, members of the same species. Behavior such as predation which involves members of different species is not social...
and computational systems. It has become an important concept for use in business. It is used in two ways as detailed below.
In the weaker sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting any sort of social behavior in or through computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
, social network service
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
s, wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s, social bookmarking
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
and other instances of what is often called social software
Social software
Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a...
illustrate ideas from social computing, but also other kinds of software applications where people interact socially.
In the stronger sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting “computations” that are carried out by groups of people, an idea that has been popularized in James Surowiecki
James Surowiecki
James Michael Surowiecki is an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".-Background:...
's book, The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better...
. Examples of social computing in this sense include collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering is the process of filtering for information or patterns using techniques involving collaboration among multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc. Applications of collaborative filtering typically involve very large data sets...
, online auctions, prediction market
Prediction market
Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions...
s, reputation systems, computational social choice, tagging, and verification games. The Social Information Processing
Social Information Processing
Social Information Processing is "an activity through which collective human actions organize knowledge." It is the creation and processing of information by a group of people...
page focuses on this sense of social computing.
Social computing has become more widely known because of its relationship to a number of recent trends. These include the growing popularity of social software
Social software
Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a...
and Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
, increased academic interest in social network analysis, the rise of open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
as a viable method of production, and a growing conviction that all of this can have a profound impact on daily life. A February 13, 2006 paper by market research
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
company Forrester Research
Forrester Research
Forrester Research is an independent technology and market research company that provides its clients with advice about technology's impact on business and consumers. Forrester Research has five research centers in the US: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California;...
suggested that:
Rationale
Social computing begins with the observation that humans — and human behavior — are profoundly social. From birth humans orient to one another, and as they grow they develop abilities for interacting with one another ranging from expression and gesture to spoken and written language. As a consequence, people are remarkably sensitive to the behavior of those around them, and make countless decisions that are shaped by their social context. Whether it's wrapping up a talk when the audience starts fidgeting, choosing the crowded restaurant over the nearly deserted one, or crossing the street against the light because everyone else is doing so, social information provides a basis for inferences, planning, and coordinating activity.The premise of social computing is that it is possible to design digital systems that support useful functionality by making socially produced information available to their users. This information may be provided directly, as when systems show the number of users who have rated a review as helpful or not. Or the information may be provided after being filtered and aggregated, as is done when systems recommend a product based on what else people with similar purchase history have purchased. Or the information may be provided indirectly, as is the case with Google's page rank algorithms which orders search results based on the number of pages that (recursively) point to them. In all of these cases, information that is produced by a group of people is used to provide or enhance the functioning of a system. Social computing is concerned with systems of this sort and the mechanisms and principles that underlie them.
Social computing can be defined as follows:
"Social Computing" refers to systems that support the gathering, representation, processing, use, and dissemination of information that is distributed across social collectivities such as teams, communities,organizations, and markets. Moreover, the information is not "anonymous" but is significant precisely because it is linked to people, who are in turn linked to other people.
Socially intelligent computing
Socially intelligent computing is a new term that refers to the recent efforts of individuals to understand the ways in which systems of people and computers will prove useful as intermediaries between people and tools used by people. These systems result in new behaviors that occur as a result of the complex interaction between humans and computers.Web 2.0
A generation of internet applications was developed implementing aspects of social computing developed in the early 21st century.Enterprise social software
Of particular interest in the realm of social computing is social software for enterprise. Sometimes referred to as "Enterprise 2.0", a term derived from Web 2.0Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
, this generally refers to the use of social computing in corporate intranets and in other medium- and large-scale business environments.
Electronic negotiation and electronic markets
Electronic negotiation represents an important and desirable coordination mechanism for electronic markets.Negotiation between agents (software agents as well as humans) allows cooperative and competitive sharing of information to determine a proper price.
Recent research and practice has also shown that electronic negotiation is beneficial for the coordination of complex interactions among organizations. Electronic negotiation has recently emerged as a very dynamic, interdisciplinary research area covering aspects from disciplines such as Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, Information Systems
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...
, Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, Communication Theory
Communication theory
Communication theory is a field of information and mathematics that studies the technical process of information and the human process of human communication.- History :- Origins :...
, Sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and Psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
.
Collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering is the method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting taste information from many users (collaborating). Recommender systems often use it as a "social approach" in order to obtain music, movie, product, web site etc. recommendations.PLATO
May be the earliest example of social computing in a live production environment with initially hundreds and soon thousands of users, on the PLATO computer system based in the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1973, when social software applications for multi-user chat rooms, group message forums, and instant messaging appeared all within that year. In 1974, email was made available as well as the world's first online newspaperOnline newspaper
An online newspaper, also known as a web newspaper, is a newspaper that exists on the World Wide Web or Internet, either separately or as an online version of a printed periodical....
called NewsReport, which supported content submitted by the user community as well as written by editors and reporters.
See also
- Computer-mediated communicationComputer-mediated communicationComputer-mediated communication is defined as any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of two or more networked computers...
- Human-based computationHuman-based computationHuman-based computation is a computer science technique in which a computational process performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans...
- Human-centered computingHuman-centered computingHuman-centered computing is an emerging, interdisciplinary academic field broadly concerned with computing and computational artifacts as they relate to the human condition...
- Social Choice
- Game TheoryGame theoryGame theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
- Knowledge networking
- Open InnovationOpen InnovationAlthough the idea and discussion about some consequences date back at least to the 60s, open innovation is a term promoted by Henry Chesbrough, a professor and executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, in his book Open Innovation: The new...
- Social Information ProcessingSocial Information ProcessingSocial Information Processing is "an activity through which collective human actions organize knowledge." It is the creation and processing of information by a group of people...
- SociologySociologySociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
- Symbiotic intelligence
- Web 2.0Web 2.0The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
- Social Software EngineeringSocial Software EngineeringSocial Software Engineering is a branch of software engineering that is concerned with the social aspects of software development. Whereas it is difficult to give an exact definition for the field, the participants of the 1st International Workshop on Social Software Engineering and Applications ...
- Multi-agent systemMulti-agent systemA multi-agent system is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve...
- Social networkSocial networkA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
External links
- Peer-reviewed overview of Social Computing by Tom Erickson (IBM Research) and Elizabeth Churchill (Yahoo! Research)
- Social Machines - Computing means connecting - Wade Roush, MIT Technology ReviewTechnology ReviewTechnology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
, August 2005 - Microsoft Research - Social Computing Group Home
- IBM Research Social Computing Group
- HP Labs Social Computing Lab
- University of Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre
- iCrossing ebook What is Social Media? - Antony Mayfield, 2007
- Socially Intelligent Computing Talk