Main Types of Social Software

E-mail will already be familiar to most people. However it can be regarded as one of the earliest forms of social software, particularly with regard to some of its one-to-many communication features, such as the use of the cc: field and mailing lists, as well as the use of contact lists or address books.

Instant Messaging (IM) allows individuals to communicate privately with one another over a public network. Communications were initially text based but have now been expanded to include audio and video and users can also exchange files.

Chat is an abbreviated name for Internet Relay Chat (IRC) which lets users join chat rooms and communicate with many people simultaneously. Users can join an existing chat room or create one of their own, on any topic of interest to them. Once in a chat room they can post comments and respond to the comments of others and invite other users to participate in private chats.

Newsgroups or forums are the internet version of electronic bulletin boards, popular among computer users long before internet. A user can post comments on a topic and other users can respond. Messages are visible to all members of the group and some services provide extensions such as file storage and calendaring.

Weblogs (or simply Blogs) are generally on line journals for a particular person or group. Owners post messages periodically and allow others to comment on them. Topics can include everyday life, politics or just about anything else. Links to other weblogs, often on similar topics, are a significant feature. There are a number of variants on blogs, including photoblogs and audioblogs, a type of podcasting.

A Wiki is a group of Web pages that allows users to add their own content and permits others to edit the content. It provides a simple method of producing HML content and is an effective medium for collaboration. The term is also used to describe the collaborative software, sometimes known as a wiki engine, used to create such a website.

Social network services allow people to meet on line around shared interests or causes. In some cases it is only possible to join a social network by being recommended by an existing member. An offshoot of this area is social network search engines, which allow people to find each other according to their XFN social relationships.

Social guides recommend places to visit in the real world such as coffee shops, restaurants and WiFi hotspots.

Social bookmarking sites allow users to post their list of bookmarks or favourite websites for others to search and view. The object is for people to meet others with whom they share a common interest.

Social Shopping applications allow group members to make recommendations and give product reviews.

Virtual Worlds and Massively-Multiplayer On line Games (MMOGs) are places where it is possible to interact with other people in a virtual world.

Folksonomy is the name given to the informal classifications (sometimes called tags or keywords) that internet users invent to categorise the objects with which they interact on-line. Social software makes these classifications available to other internet users, so folksonomy can be viewed as a distributed classification system.