This is a duplicate post of one I made on the grad school cohort blog I’m on
I was playing with the idea of building an online community site (I don’t know what kind or how it will take shape just yet) so I’ve been thinking a lot about social software. One of my goals for going to grad school in the first place is figuring out what makes communitites work.
Anyway, one of the blogs I read, Many 2 Many, is a blog devoted to social software. A few days ago, one of the authors linked to this great rant about how companies are designing “groupware” for managers to buy, not for people to use. Part of the rant was:
So I said, narrow the focus. Your “use case” should be, there’s a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?
That got me a look like I had just sprouted a third head, but bear with me, because I think that it’s not only crude but insightful. “How will this software get my users laid” should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).
“Social software” is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.
You know? I think he has a point.
| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |
