Laurel Papworth blogged recently about New Media is not Social Media, and after Matthew Hodgson’s presentation at Web Directions Government yesterday it got me thinking about other ways you can measure or assess whether a website is “social” (aka “2.0″) or not.
Also another thing that got me thinking was when I was on The RiotACT a few days ago in “discussion” with someone about news site features, particularly user profiles and the amount of personal information people choose to disclose (and how it affects or inhibits social interaction on a site).
So what attributes does a site need to have in order to qualify for the “social” tag?
When you visit a website, are you aware there are other users on the site … or does it feel like you’re the only person there. If you feel completely isolated then the site is definitely not social.
If you know there are other users on the site because you can see their usernames then the site may be social. To what extent do those usernames correspond to real people. Are they just aliases or real names? What do you know about these people? Do you know what they look like – is there a profile photo?
When all you know about other people that visit and use the same website as you is their username then it can be a bit hard to believe they are real people. They’re shallow – no life in them. Just a tag. Probably something with underscores and numbers in it that doesn’t even sound like a name.
But the definitive measure of the “social” status of a website is whether you can interact with those people. Forums are social sites that go way back to the days of IRC and beyond; nowadays we have the next generation of forums and chat including Twitter, FriendFeed – blogs a frequently social unless the author locks down commenting and interaction between visitors and with themselves. Features like tagging, sharing or viewing others’ favourites, commenting, discussion etc are all social features that enable interaction.
But getting back to the personal information aspect – a site may be social by means of providing mechanisms for interaction between users … but if you know very little about other users then I believe that interaction is going to be shallow, brief and possibly awkward. Which is why I would encourage users of social “Web 2.0″ sites to volunteer as much information as they feel comfortable with in order to facilitate and deepen that interaction with others.
// purecaffeine.com, UX, design, social media and Gov 2.0 blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
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