PHONifier. Designing Communities101507 » SlideShare. Touch. Beyond Message Boards - Ideas for the New Communities. It wasn't too long ago that online communities had a killer app - it was the message board.
It was the Honeymooners of early television. When choice was limited, popularity grew around the best options of the time. Social Software Building Blocks / nForm / Customer Insight, Stra. There are lots of definitions of social software out there, ranging from the clinical (“software that enables people to connect through computer-mediated communication”) to the pragmatic (“stuff that gets spammed”).
While doing research for a recent workshop, I came across a useful list of seven social software elements. These seven building blocks–identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation and sharing–provide a good functional definition for social software. They’re also a solid foundation for thinking about how social software works.