Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on creating or fostering existing social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing. The rise in social computing is attributed to the prevalence of personal devices and increased overall computing power. This enables a growing number of users to participate in sharing content and interact with another.
Definitions Humans—and human behavior—are profoundly social. Humans tend to orient to one another and develop abilities to interact with each other and other species. This ranges from expression and gesture through spoken, written, and body language. Humans are influenced by the behavior of those around them and can rely on social context and cues to make decisions. An example of a behavior relying on social contexts is applauding at the end of the play. This is based on the context that the show ended, and other audience members are applauding. Social information provides a basis for inferences, planning, and coordinating activity.
Examples Common tools include blogs, email, instant messaging, social networking sites, wikis, and social bookmarking platforms. These technologies enable users to generate content, share knowledge, and interact in real time.
Applications The rise of social computing has highlighted opportunities for businesses. Businesses are interacting on social computing platforms and investing in facilities to support and research social computing.Business models can leverage the massive customer bases that accumulate through social computing channels. Some organizations have started their own blogs and networks (McAfee, 2006, Joe, 2005). Organizations from diverse industry sectors such as Google, Cisco, and Fox, have sought to acquire or invest in successful social computing enterprises.A business blog can serve as a source of information and promotion for the company. This allows the company to share content about the company and their initiatives.
Businesses have also interacted with social computing to market themselves and interact with customers. A notable example is Wendy's with their X (formerly Twitter) account. The account was primarily used to promote business promotions and interact with users in a playful or meaningful way.
E-commerce web sites have allowed users to leave reviews and feedback on purchases which has improved online shopping experience for sellers and consumers.As another example of social computing’s business applications, many e-commerce Web sites have adopted online product/vendor feedback/reputation systems. Such systems provide an asynchronous platform for the consumer community to share experiences collectively and influence their purchasing behavior. They also provide a vehicle for eliciting feedback information valuable to the vendors and e-commerce site operators.Wang, F. Y., Carley, K. M., Zeng, D., & Mao, W. (2007). Social computing: From social informatics to social intelligence. IEEE Intelligent systems, 22(2), 79-83.Consumers can use the feedback systems to make a more educated choice on a purchase by comparing reviews between products or vendors. Sellers can track consumer behaviors and trends regarding a product and adjust their supply according to the demand.
Challenges and criticism Social computing raises several concerns related to privacy, data security, and algorithmic bias. The widespread collection and analysis of user-generated data can lead to ethical dilemmas, especially when users are unaware of how their information is used. Critics also highlight issues of digital labor, surveillance, and the spread of misinformation, which can influence public opinion and social dynamics.
Term appearance
The term appeared in the mid 1990s after technology advancements and development of the web.
In 1994, the concept of social computing was first proposed by Schuler. He thought, "Social computing is a computing application, with software as the medium or focus of social relationships." Premise The premise of social computing is that it is possible to design digital systems that support useful functionality by making socially produced information available to their users. This information may be provided directly, as when systems show the number of users who have rated a review as helpful or not. Or the information may be provided after being filtered and aggregated, as is done when systems recommend a product based on what else people with similar purchase history have purchased. Alternatively, the information may be provided indirectly, as is the case with Google's page rank algorithms which orders search results based on the number of pages that (recursively) point to them. In all of these cases, information that is produced by a group of people is used to provide or enhance the functioning of a system. Social computing is concerned with systems of this sort and the mechanisms and principles that underlie them.
Social computing can be defined as follows:
"Social Computing" refers to systems that support the gathering, representation, processing, use, and dissemination of information that is distributed across social collectivities such as teams, communities, organizations, and markets. Moreover, the information is not "anonymous" but is significantly precise because it is linked to people, who are in turn linked to other people.From "Social Computing", introduction to Social Computing special edition of the Communications of the ACM, edited by Douglas Schuler, Volume 37, Issue 1 (January 1994), Pages: 28 - 108
More recent definitions, however, have foregone the restrictions regarding anonymity of information, acknowledging the continued spread and increasing pervasiveness of social computing. As an example, Hemmatazad, N. (2014) defined social computing as "the use of computational devices to facilitate or augment the social interactions of their users, or to evaluate those interactions in an effort to obtain new information."From Social Computing in Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Third Edition. IGI Global, 2014, p. 6754.
Social computing has to do with supporting "computations" that are carried out by groups of people, an idea that has been popularized in James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Examples of social computing in this sense include collaborative filtering, online auctions, reputation systems, computational social choice, tagging, and verification games. The social information processing page focuses on this sense of social computing.
History
Technology infrastructure
Users were able to interact more with websites after the development of Web 2.0. This was an advancement from Web 1.0. Comode G. and Krishnamurthy B. (2008) note that "content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content."
Web 2.0 provided functionalities that allowed for low-cost web-hosting services and introduced features with browser windows that used basic information structure and expanded it to as many devices as possible using HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Sometimes referred to as "Enterprise 2.0", a term derived from Web 2.0, social software for enterprise generally refers to the use of social computing in corporate intranets and in other medium- and large-scale business environments. It consisted of a class of tools that allowed for networking and social changes to businesses at the time. It was a layering of the business tools on Web 2.0 and brought forth several applications and collaborative software with specific uses.
FinanceElectronic negotiation, which first came up in 1969 and was adapted over time to suit financial markets networking needs, represents an important and desirable coordination mechanism for electronic markets. Negotiation between agents (software agents as well as humans) allows cooperative and competitive sharing of information to determine a proper price. Recent research and practice has also shown that electronic negotiation is beneficial for the coordination of complex interactions among organizations. Electronic negotiation has recently emerged as a very dynamic, interdisciplinary research area covering aspects from disciplines such as Economics, Information Systems, Computer Science, Communication Theory, Sociology and Psychology.Social computing has become more widely known because of its relationship to a number of recent trends. These include the growing popularity of social software and Web 3.0, increased academic interest in social network analysis, the rise of open source as a viable method of production, and a growing conviction that all of this can have a profound impact on daily life. A February 13, 2006 paper by market research company Forrester Research suggested that: Easy connections brought about by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.A term coined by Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School in the Spring 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review.
Developments PLATO was one of the earliest examples of social computing in a live production environment with initially hundreds and soon thousands of users. The PLATO computer system was developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1960s. In the 70s, the system supported social software applications for multi-user chat rooms, group message forums, and instant messaging.
In 1974, email was made available as well as the world's first online newspaper called NewsReport, which supported content submitted by the user community as well as written by editors and reporters.
Chat rooms were an early instance of social computing. A notable chatroom was AOL Instant Messenger, which according "to PC Magazine, AOL Instant Messenger had over 200 million registered users as of November 2003."Phillips, M. B. (2004). The Advantages and Disadvantages of AOL Instant Messenger as a Chat Reference System.
Another early instance of social computing is blogging. A blog is a web page where a user can add text and/or images to express ideas and opinions. This could range from personal experiences to commentary on news/topics. In the mid 1990s, users began creating web-blogs and sharing their thoughts on the web. This attracted users to read and discuss blogs online. Blogs have become a fundamental basis to the formation of social networks which incorporates the idea of users expressing themselves through text or images for others to view.
Theoretical foundations