Social Age

Social Age^[1] encompasses both societal and technological changes succeeding the Information age. It is diffident from the Information age as it gives more prominence to social factors when adopting and/or extending technology and information. It further broadens the definition of Attention Age because social age focuses on many forms of societal interactions including collaboration and sharing.

Contributing Factors

Unprecedented technological advancements that are leading to resource rich and mobile computing devices, decreasing communication cost, and Web 2.0 technologies are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, socialize, learn, and collaborate to create a better world while propelling us to the social age of societal development. Social age revolves around society, its people, and their needs where the technology is adopted, extended, or invented as a tool to achieve those needs. These changes are enabling people to express themselves in creative ways, stay in touched with loved ones, gain/give attention, foster sharing and collaboration, unite for a common cause, etc.
Though some people believe that these changes are only relevant in social interactions or to Generation Y and Generation Z, they have a much broader impact in many areas such as media, business, marketing, politics, social welfare, etc. Some of the examples include CNN iReport and Blogs^[2], Wikis, blogs, and private social networking site maintained by businesses for their customers and employees, President Barack Obama's campaign^[3]^[4], and DARPA Network Challenge^[5].

Taxonomy

Social age manifests in many forms and so far we have seen only its inception. Below is some of the well known areas that of social age applications:

Social networks - any interaction between individuals or organizations, e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut
Social media - any form of media for social interaction

Wiki - e.g., Wikipedia
Blog - e.g., Blogger (service)
Micro-blogging - e.g., Twitter
Video sharing - e.g., YouTube, Metacafe

Social marketing - any form of marking through society

Amazon.com recommendations^[6]

Social clouds - any form of recommendation by community, more popular ones will survive

Social news - e.g., Digg
Social bookmarking - e.g., StumbleUpon, CiteULike

Community cloud computing - where community put computing resources to perform a tack that helps community

References

^ Azua, Maria (2009) The Social Factor, IBM Press, ISBN 978-0-13-701890-1
^ CNN Blogs, Available: http://www.cnn.com/exchange/blogs/index.html?hpt=Sbin
^ How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power, Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html
^ Obama Social, Available: http://www.slideshare.net/saydowin/obama-social
^ DARPA Network Challenge, Available: https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil
^ G. Linden, B. Smith, J. York, "Amazon.com recommendations: item-to-item collaborative filtering," IEEE Internet Computing, vol.7, no.1, Jan/Feb 2003, pp. 76-80.

[1] Azua, Maria (2009) The Social Factor, IBM Press, ISBN 978-0-13-701890-1

[2] CNN Blogs, Available: http://www.cnn.com/exchange/blogs/index.html?hpt=Sbin

[3] How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power, Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html

[4] Obama Social, Available: http://www.slideshare.net/saydowin/obama-social

[5] DARPA Network Challenge, Available: https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil

[6] G. Linden, B. Smith, J. York, "Amazon.com recommendations: item-to-item collaborative filtering," IEEE Internet Computing, vol.7, no.1, Jan/Feb 2003, pp. 76-80.

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