Social computing is a rapidly growing and constantly evolving technology that is aimed at increasing communication, encouraging collaboration, and enhancing productivity among people and resources. Social computing applications or Web 2.0 are built on a range of advanced and supporting technologies that enhance collective action and interaction which currently dominates the Web (Parameswaran & Whinston 2007). Social computing applications are categorized into social media, social bookmarking, and social networks categories as identified by the continuing Web 2.0 trend (Schwartz et al. 2009; Amer-Yahia, 2009). Each of these categories has been embodied by various social software and web sites. Some of the best-known and equally famous social web sites that dominate the web are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Delicious, and LinkedIn.

1. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
during that decade that still persists in major
Social Computing portion of the world. There requires a heavy
Social computing is a rapidly growing and transfer of larger amounts of data in most
constantly evolving technology that is aimed social computing applications that tend to be
at increasing communication, encouraging interactive with multi media and also manage
collaboration, and enhancing productivity messaging. AOL step forward and provided
among people and resources. Social such interactive services to the mass public
computing applications or Web 2.0 are built for the first time in mid-1990s.
on a range of advanced and supporting
Later on during late 1990s, the problem was
technologies that enhance collective action
sorted out, and computer industry embraced
and interaction which currently dominates
a huge increase in internet bandwidth and
the Web (Parameswaran &
computing capacity of computers. This
Whinston 2007).
achievement also impacted on software
Social computing applications are categorized industry, and interactive web sites and instant
into social media, social bookmarking, and messaging tools started to show up.
social networks categories as identified by the Companies started to invest in e-commerce
continuing Web 2.0 trend (Schwartz et al. sites and online shopping shops. This resulted
2009; Amer-Yahia, 2009). Each of these new and unique social applications such as
categories has been embodied by various Wikis, news forums, and blogs to appear
social software and web sites. Some of the online and people started to share their
best-known and equally famous social web viewpoints, discussion, and experiences.
sites that dominate the web are Facebook,
The beginning of 21st century witnessed a
YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Delicious, and huge change and brought social computing to
LinkedIn.
the forefront of the citizens of digital age.
More and more people started using social
History of Social Computing
software that has grown into what we know
The ideas and principles of social computing today.
have been around in web communities for
long time. Discussion forums and emails were Social Software
the primary means of discussion and
Social software is the combination of so many
communication as early as in 1980s. tools and services that transformed static web
Originally, email was thought as providing
into read/write web and that enabled people
people ways of communication; but later on, to connect and collaborate more easily.
it provided a significant business value. Today,
some people consider social computing It can be defined as a
applications as a tool for goofing off or having
fun (Schwartz et al. 2009). 1. means of collaborating, and building
purpose-aware communities online,
The rise of the personal computing era
encouraged people and enterprises to get 2. software that supports and derives added
personal computers as to increase their value from human social behaviour,
communication with remote offices and 3. tool that can be syndicated, shared,
customers. The cost of forwarding bits blended, and can be reused again and
through Internet became major problem again.
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2. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
Characteristics of Social Software this for their personal satisfaction, gaining
current knowledge, or learning from scholarly
1. Some of the characteristics listed below
arguments.
are those that distinguish social software
from traditional software. Building social computing applications
requires understanding the insight of social
2. Easily navigable: easy content creation
behavioural theories and social software
and sharing
design considerations that will be
3. Peer to peer networking and incorporated in those applications, such as,
communication how participation of people is enabled, what
type and age group of people is targeted, how
4. Online collaboration you allow people to control web site,
understanding psychology of participants that
5. Adding metadata such as tags, comments
whether people just access the website for
to online content and blog entries
viewing or information gaining purpose or
6. Conversations: distributed and in real they really want to participate in collaborative
time activities, creating balance between
constraints and creativity, is it an open access
7. Bottom up community development site or built for a specific region, etc.
8. Capitalizing on the wisdom of crowds It is also good to know prior to building social
9. Easy handling of malicious users computing applications what principles and
features define a social system. Some
10. Transparent transactions common social computing applications are
discussed below:
11. Easy creation of personal learning spaces
12. Portability Tagging
Keywords or short key phrases that define
13. Read/write web what your digital object is all about are simply
14. Overcoming Barriers of Distance and Time termed as Tags in social computing
community. Tagging is adding tags on your
Social Computing Applications photos, bookmarks, files, and other content
(Strohmaier et al., 2009). These are the ways
The main objective of creating social
of freely describing resources. Tagging help
computing applications is to cater the social
computer users easily discover and browse
needs of digital natives. There are many social
content over the internet.
computing applications that are built on this
concept such as Wikis, Blogs, News forums, There can be an infinite number of viewpoints
Prediction Markets, Recommender, through which a digital object can be seen
Reputation management system, etc. This is and interpreted (Jiang et al., 2010). So, the
because the nature of issues that an Internet more the number of relevant labels on an
site or public-facing corporate sites solve is object, the more the object would be
different than the issues faced by employees searchable on the web. Sometimes, we don’t
of an enterprise using internally available find a suitable name for our content and
resources. It means that people participating system automatically generates its name such
in blog post and participation in discussion do as AE000098.jpg. Here, tagging allows us to
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3. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
manage our content in a manner that lets the training data. Hybrid collaborative filtering
machine find it [3]. Tagging allows users to combines model-based and memory-based CF
choose the labels that match their own needs algorithms.
and tastes, which greatly reduces the
cognitive efforts [2]. According to recent user Prediction Markets
studies, users do annotate their photos in Prediction markets are based on the principle
order to promote the public attention degree of wisdom of the crowd that more accurate
[2]. Tagging is supported in almost any new prediction will emerge from the betting
Web application involving user participation, activity of the collective. The other terms used
e.g. Flickr, YouTube, Amazon, etc. in place of these markets are information
markets or event futures (Servan-Schreiber et
Collaborative Filtering al. 2004).
Collaborative filtering is the method of getting
personalized recommendations by computing These markets reward accurate predictions
through wins and punish inaccurate
user- or item-based similarity profiles (Chen
et al. 2010). It analyzes data to develop predictions through losses (Wolfers &
Zitzewitz, 2004).
profiles of people who are related with similar
tastes and spending habits (Sarwar et al., The type of contracts in prediction markets
2001). are basically divided into three categories,
such as: Winner-take-all contract, Index
• It is based on ‘word-of-mouth’ idea.
Contract, and Spread Betting.
• It gives reliable recommendations.
Reputation Management Systems
• It needs a lot of stored data for reliable
Reputation management systems or trust-
recommendations for the active user.
based reputation mechanisms establish a
• The bigger the size of population, the healthy and efficient collaboration among
more useful and effective anonymous online users who have not prior
recommendations will be produced by the knowledge about each other. They construct
system (Smart Mobs) large-scale word-of-mouth networks
(Dellarocas, 2005; Tennie et al., 2010).
• Small data – shows false connections or
poor predictions of active user tastes The primary objective of trust and reputation
management is to enable transparent and
• Suffers from cold start problem – efficient transactions between users where
database needs to be populated first. cooperation is compromised by post
contractual opportunism or information
Basically there are two types of collaborative
asymmetries (Kreps, & Wilson, 1982).
filtering techniques, such as Memory-based
collaborating filtering and Model-based Social Computing Concepts &
collaborating filtering methods. Memory-
Design Principles
based collaborating filtering systems rely on
user or item profiles and sometimes use user Social computing concepts are built around
rating data for computing similarity, while four major areas that may overlap with each
Model-based collaborating filtering find other. Such as: social media, social
similar patterns or hidden factors based on
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4. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
bookmarking, social networks, and social not constrain them from using creative
communication. features.
The important design principles which make The principle of sociability
success of social systems more likely are:
This principle is required to ensure and
embed social presence and collaboration
The principle of adaptability
among visitors and participants of social
This requires that social software is built on software.
small services that interoperate, connect
using open standards, and should be built The principle of connectivity
with open source software. So that people
The principle of connectivity is based on the
can adapt and evolve systems to suit their
idea that everything should influence
local needs (Dron, 2007).
everything else and there should nothing exist
http://www.ifets.info/journals/10_3/5.pdf).
in isolation (Dron, 2007).
The principle of evolvability
The principle of context
This principles encourages design of deferred
This principle ensures that social software
systems; easily decidable systems whose
must be built on the concept that it is a very
structure is not fixed.
valuable small part of a much greater whole
(Dron, 2007).
The principle of participation
The principle of participation requires that The principle of constraint
how participation of users is enabled, how
This principle requires that constraints must
users’ participation is guaranteed, what
be incorporated in social software and users
aspects are built in systems that encourage
should be aware of those constraints and also
participation (Dron, 2007).
know how to use them to enhance learning.
The principle of parcellation
The principle of scale
This principle ensures that systems are built
This principle tracks small and large
distinctly from each other, they are loosely
components in the system and ensures that
coupled and occasionally connected with each
the large should arise out of the small in an
other, and are ideal hierarchical niches that
endless cycle.
talk with each other.
The principle of trust The principle of understanding
The principle of trust ensures building of
psychology of user
reliable and harmless social software that This ensures that what user wants from social
identify reliability in people and systems, and software, and it should provide the user all
protects them from harm. collaborative and other social presence
features.
The principle of stigmergy
The Rise of Web 2.0
This principle ensures that social systems be
built on concept that guide users how to get There were times when people used to go to
maximum from them by using signs and do search engines and seek their requirements
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5. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
by typing out search terms and taking great AJAX
care of the sequence and combination of
AJAX is web development technique for
terms. The term ‘Apple’ almost consistently
interactive Web applications. AJAX provides
reaped an ‘apple’ to all searchers across the
standard ways of dynamically interacting with
globe. The reason behind this consistency was
content to make dynamic requests to the
the non-gallant approach by search engines to
server without refreshing the full page.
optimize searches.
As time passed by search engine optimization Podcast
hit the market like a wave – soon enough A podcast is the collection of media files
every search engine company was working on (either audio or video) distributed and
SEO and search results began to change and released episodically over the internet using
become more specific and relevant almost syndication feeds for playback on portable
overnight. The proof is irrefutable and search media players and personal computers.
results have dramatically become highly
specific and more-so ‘targeted’. This is the Widgets
Web 2.0 paradigm, where search results are A widget, also known as gadget, snippet, or
highly specific, relevant, and geared towards flake, is web application software for the web
individual’s taste, interests, ideas, etc. installable and executable within a web page
The term Web 2.0 is often referenced as the by the web user.
web applications that facilitate collaborative
information sharing, interoperability, and
Python
user-centered design on the web in order to Python is a multi paradigm programming
provide better user experience. These sites language that integrates your work more
use technologies such as AJAX, JavaScript, quickly and reduces your maintenance costs
Widgets, Python, Perl, Flash, Silverlight, and by using automatic memory management of
REST to enhance their look and interaction. programming tasks.
These sites usually include blogs, wikis, news
forums, mashups, social bookmarking, social Perl
peer-to-peer networking sites, open source Perl (practical extraction and reporting
communities, photo and video sharing language) is a general purpose interpreted
communities, and more. programming language used for a huge
number of uses including system
Social Computing Enabling administration, Web application
technologies & Architecture development, GUI development, etc.
The architecture and technologies which
make social computing applications possible Ruby on Rails
in today’s collaborative environment are Ruby on Rails is an open source web
continuously evolving over time and will framework that lowers the barriers of entry to
continue to change and grow as new programming. It has made easy the powerful
capabilities become available on Internet web applications that formerly might have
(Parameswaran & taken weeks or months to develop.
Whinston 2007b).
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6. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
MySQL an interface and the web service then
responds to the user's input.
MySQL is the most popular open source,
multi-user, and multithreaded SQL database
The Models of Social Computing
management system, developed, distributed,
and their Relevance to Behaviour
and supported by Oracle Corporation.
"The capacity of human communities to
Microsoft SharePoint evolve towards higher order complexity and
harmony through such innovation
Microsoft SharePoint is a unique social
mechanisms as differentiation and
computing application that has taken a
integration, competition, and collaboration”.
unique approach of designing 8 applications
–
using one platform. Here are 8 ways users can
extend SharePoint’s out-of-the-box -Wikipedia
capabilities to better fit their social computing
vision. People in Pakistan are leading with example
when it comes to enhancing interaction of
JavaScript local and overseas users. This is exactly the
kind of insight, which will encourage and
JavaScript was designed to add interactivity to
enable new users to foster tangible focus on
HTML pages. It allows developers to program
problems related to the socio-economic uplift
code that would be downloaded as part of the
of the nation.
page’s content and run inside user’s browser.
One of the major models that have come to
SilverLight face is collaboration. Defined as “a recursive
Microsoft Silverlight is a popular web process where two or more people or
application framework used to build and organizations work together toward an
deliver cross-browser and cross-platform intersection of common goals,” (Thomas,
experiences on the web. It allows web 2010). Collaboration has been one of the key
developers to create powerful user interfaces elements for the success of the so-called
using an XML-based language called XAML, social community paradigm. The extent to
JavaScript, AJAX, and .net. which communities have aligned themselves
in organized and connected ways to
REST coordinate with each other is immense.
A common architecture used for getting
The new paradigm is of working in
information content from a social computing
collaboration and reaping the rewards of
application by reading web pages that contain
synergy in the last year all great enterprise
XML data files that describe and include
formation has been through social means.
desired content.
People have begun to change their online
Web Services behavior as a result of the social computing
Web Services are a collection of open influence on their lives. The Largest enterprise
protocols developed to interact with users online have been social:
and exchange their data between
-Democratic media website
applications. Here, a user enters data through
-Online community
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7. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
-Most comprehensive encyclopedia
-Video archive
-Movie review database
-Auction market
-Travel resource
Crowd Sourcing Vs Out Sourcing
Although crowd sourcing and out sourcing is a
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8. Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Computing
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