The Social Web and “Digital Natives”
What IT Professionals Should Know
Boston Area Windows Server Group
March 5, 2008
Anthony A. Pino
Harvard College
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School
aapino@fas.harvard.edu
Overview
Technology and the way people use it is
changing
The next wave of users have different
assumptions and expectations about
information and how they interact with it
and their peers
We begin by understanding emerging
social informational tools and trends
What is the Social Web?
Web 2.0
◦ “A perceived second generation of web-based
communities and hosted services — such as
social-networking sites, wikis and
folksonomies — which aim to facilitate
collaboration and sharing between users.”
◦ From Consuming to Producing
◦ Technology Effect
◦ User Effect
Digital Natives
What is a Digital Native
Someone for whom connectedness is
taken for granted
Originally coined by writer and
technologist Mark Prensky
See the research project at Harvard Law
School at www.DigitalNative.org
What is a Digital Native?
Generally born after 1984 and developed
with the internet playing a large role in their
lives
◦ Digital Immigrants: Preserve “accent” because
they were socialized differently.
“think and process information fundamentally
differently.” (Prensky)
◦ Multitasking
◦ Assumptions about how things ought to work
Software manual v. intuitive and adaptive software
Sense of privacy
What is a Digital Native
Constantly connected
Even while sleeping, their networks are
active
◦ “Friend requests” on social networking sites
greet DNs as they check e-mail in the
morning
The Internet, with all its tool and services,
has penetrated the lives of DNs
Key Point: They are using the Internet in
new ways
Some Aspects of The Social Web
Social Production
◦ Blogs
◦ Wikis
◦ Tagging and Folksonomies
◦ Mashups
Considerations for New Apps
Blogs
A website on which entries are written in
chronological order and displayed in reverse
chronological order. “Blog” can also be used
as a verb, meaning to maintain or add
content to a blog. (Wikipedia)
◦ Examples: Greg Mankiw, Robert Scoble.
RSS, Really Simple Syndication, offers feeds
for content so that fresh information can be
delivered (pushed) to readers
◦ Look for this symbol:
Blogs
The Blogosphere
◦ Used to describe blog posts, the associated comments, and
references and interlinking between them.
Implications of Blogs
◦ Control of published information becomes more
decentralized; anyone can publish. Analogous to the
printing press in its ability to encourage information flow
◦ Defamation, privacy
◦ Employment issues
◦ Blogging with companies
Launching a new app? Realize the value of “blogging
buzz”
◦ BzzAgent Frog Pond
Wikis
Wiki is a generic term (means “quick” in
Hawaiian)
◦ Website or other resource that allows users to add
and edit content collectively
◦ Holy grail of community-based publishing
◦ Many different software packages for wikis
Most popular: MediaWiki, which runs wikipedia.org
Examples of other wikis:
◦ http://www.DigitalNative.org
◦ http://www.wikitravel.org
Many small groups, events, are using wikis for
lightweight collaboration and information sharing.
Tagging and Social Bookmarking
Del.icio.us (also at delicious.com)
◦ “A social bookmarking service for sharing
web links.”
Tagging and Social Bookmarking
Del.icio.us
◦ Has exploded into a social network tool for
organizing information, collaborating with
colleagues, and discovering new information
◦ Based on “tagging.”
Tagging
Keywords for content
Allows for multiple, non-exclusive categories
A “folksonomy” is a peer-driven taxonomy
Peers decide on how to categorize content
through democratically created metadata
◦ Metadata (tags and notes to describe the content
are created by both the producers and
consumers of the content.)
◦ Caters to the “long tail” of search by allowing for
minority keywords
Meta noise not an issue, serves the “thin end of the tail.”
Tagging
For more, see David Weinberger’s
Everything is Miscellanous
Interoperability and Mashups
Mashup: “A website or application that
combines content from more than one source
into an integrated experience.”
Key enabler: XML
◦ Allows for cross-platform, human readable,
data exchange.
Popular APIs
◦ Amazon, Google (30+), Del.icio.us, Flickr
Mashup Example: MBTA.com
Mashup Example: Loc.alize.us
Mashup Example: HousingMaps
Other Types of Mashups
Multimedia content mashups
◦ YouTube, other media-sharing websites.
Creative Commons
◦ “Some Rights Reserved”
◦ Attribution alone (by)
◦ Attribution + Noncommercial (by-nc)
◦ Attribution + NoDerivs (by-nd)
◦ Attribution + ShareAlike (by-sa)
◦ Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)
◦ Attribution + Noncommercial + ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)
CONSIDERATIONS FOR
THE FUTURE
End of the Software Adoption Cycle
From O’Reilly Radar: Web 2.0 Principles
and Best Practices
Software is now a service
◦ Always on
◦ Always improving
◦ Who asks “what version of Google is this?”
End of the Software Adoption Cycle
Release early, often
◦ Perpetual beta
Engage users as co-developer and real time
testers
◦ Importance of feedback loop
◦ Instrument your product
Show different versions to different users; measure
usage trends
◦ Incrementally add features
Google Maps followed this model in 2005; 8 months of
beta during which Google gained valuable feedback and
added requested improvements
End of the Software Adoption Cycle
Concerns
◦ User testing does not replace QA
◦ Beware excess “thrashing”
◦ The cost of uptime
◦ Importance of data privacy
◦ Make a good first impression
Prioritize features
Mashups and Business Models
Larger building blocks from which one can
create new services
Concerns: services can vanish
◦ How reliable are these APIs?
◦ Long term dependability
For provides of services and data
◦ “Set it free.” (Weinberger in Harvard Business
Review)
Maintain control by allowing access on your terms
Opportunities for branding, name diffusion
◦ Much content now under Creative Commons
Mashups and Business Models
Firms that celebrate the mashup model
have been doing well
◦ Dapper.net closed a round of VC funding for
$1.5 million
◦ This paradigm involves all of the Internet’s
senior players: Yahoo! Google, Microsoft,
Amazon, and eBay
Nearly half of all eBay’s listing are submitted via
third party tools that consume its service
Mashups and Business Models
Get Your Data Out There
◦ The world of widgets: iGoogle, Amazon
Wishlist, other tidbits on blogs
Staying Abreast / Further Reading
TechCrunch.com
ProgrammableWeb.com
Innovation Economy Blog
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/digitalnatives
The Wealth of Networks,Yochai Benkler
Summary
Users are consuming/producing
information differently and have new
expectations and assumptions
◦ Participation, sharing
◦ Tagging and re-organization, mashups
◦ Granular addressability of content, control of
settings
◦ Software that adapts, improves with use
Information must be accessible, portable,
sharable and remixable.
The Social Web and “Digital Natives”
What IT Professionals Should Know
Boston Area Windows Server Group
March 5, 2008
Anthony A. Pino
Harvard College
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School
aapino@fas.harvard.edu