Most people are now familiar with social webs like Twitter, YouTube, and so on. These social webs are a place to connect. What is interesting is that there are four different components that make up any given social web. All social web sites will always have these same components to one degree or another. These components include user-generated content, user-generated distribution, user-generated filtering, and user-generated context. User-generated context is the most interesting component of social web and is truly creating new ways for people to communicate with each other.
The Phenomenon of User-Generated Context on Social Webs |
The Four Elements of a Social Web.
- User-generated Content. Depending on the social web this can include videos (YouTube), web sites (StumbleUpon), short messages (Twitter), and so on.
- User-generated Filtering. All social web sites give users the means to filter the information that they can access. Many times the user filters this input such as with key word searches or the user can let his or her connections filter content for them. For example with Digg, users “Digg” postings and this can determine what all users can easily view.
- User-generated Distribution. Distribution can include such things as RSS feeds, YouTube postings, expanding (or not expanding) your connections, and so on. The user controls the distribution to some degree versus the media company controlling the distribution as in the case of television programming.
- User-generated Context. This what is really different about the social media web. Users and third parties can now determine the context of where and how the user-generated media is presented to the end-user. The user-generated content can be displayed in a number of contexts. Previously the media company had complete control of how the content would be displayed and it what context. For example, a TV network may decide that a television program will air at 8 pm and it will be exactly 30 minutes long with commercials. With social web, the content can be displayed immediately or delayed by the user indefinitely. Additionally, user can re-tweek content, they can blog it, they can put it in widgets, and so on. They can also re-mix it and transform it into something completely different from the original content.
See Servant of Chaos’ blog posting, Who Gives a Hoot About Twitter? for more details on the four elements of social networking. Also, this posting provides a good introduction to Professor Michael Wesch. Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the effects of new media on human interaction. See his lecture on Social Media at the National Library of Congress.
