Social Software

This topic is the one I have become the most familiar with, especially over the past few weeks working on the group Facebook project (which all of you should check out!). Personally, out of the networks discussed in this week's readings, I find Facebook to be the most interesting and also have the most options for incorporation into a library.

I was interested to read the articles this week that had to do with the academic environment and social software. I'm interested in it for a number of reasons, particularly, because online communities are so ubiquitous and increasingly popular and I'm interested in how the academic environment is responding to this.

There were two articles this week that touched on the topic. Although Hewitt and Forte and Williams discuss student/faculty relationships, their findings, attitudes and messages are quite different.

I've been waiting for this week.  I think this is the only topic I was really familiar with before this course started.  And I've been working with my group for the project on this topic, too, so I've been immersed in social networks for the last few weeks.

As Philip J. Hollenback wrote in Bloglines, Flickr, and del.icio.us make RSS delectable, RSS readers used to be primarily downloadable software. Users were stuck reading their RSS feeds on one computer unless they took time to sort through and "read" the same articles again.

Wow, there is a lot involved in Social Software. Sure, I haven't been blogging before, but I have been surprisingly using all sorts of Social Software and subconsciously, I didn't even know it!