Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote co-operation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before. The opportunities offered by social software are instant connections and opportunities to learn. An additional defining feature of social software is that apart from interaction and collaboration, it aggregates the collective behaviour of its users, allowing not only crowds to learn from an individual but individuals to learn from the crowds as well. Hence, the interactions enabled by social software can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many.
Webs, formerly Freewebs, was a freemium, primarily static site-only web host founded in 2001. The service offered free and premium website hosting plans, and their own templated website building service. Unusually, Webs does not offer any dynamic content support aside from their own dynamic "apps", despite offering FTP access and allowing HTML uploads.
WebMD is an American corporation which publishes online news and information about human health and well-being. The WebMD website also includes information about drugs and is an important healthcare information website and the most popular consumer-oriented health site.
Web 2.0 refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability for end users.
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is generally any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online content aggregation platforms such as social media, discussion forums and wikis. It is a product consumers create to disseminate information about online products or the firms that market them.
AboutUs.com is an inactive internet domain directory wiki. It lists websites along with information about their content. As a wiki, AboutUs allows Internet users to add entries or modify information. AboutUs.com has since become a wiki for more than just websites. The site allows pages to be created for people, places, and almost anything else.
Boston.com is a regional website that offers news and information about the Boston, Massachusetts, region. It is owned and operated by Boston Globe Media Partners, publisher of The Boston Globe.
Content creation is the act of producing and sharing information or media content for specific audiences, particularly in digital contexts. According to Dictionary.com, content refers to "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of various arts" for self-expression, distribution, marketing and/or publication. Content creation encompasses various activities including maintaining and updating web sites, blogging, article writing, photography, videography, online commentary, social media accounts, and editing and distribution of digital media. In a survey conducted by Pew, content creation was defined as "the material people contribute to the online world."
Social network aggregation is the process of collecting content from multiple social network services into a unified presentation. Examples of social network aggregators include Hootsuite or FriendFeed, which may pull together information into a single location or help a user consolidate multiple social networking profiles into a single profile.
The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook.
Xtube was a Canadian pornographic video hosting service and social networking site based in Toronto, Ontario. It was established in 2006 and is notable for being the first adult community site to allow users to upload and share adult videos. Xtube was not a producer of pornography, instead it provided a platform for content uploaded by users. User-submitted content included pornographic videos, webcam models, pornographic photographs, and erotic literature, and incorporated social networking features.
Encyclopedia Dramatica is a satirical online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google Search in 2010. An administrator of the website was the perpetrator of the 2017 Aztec High School shooting, and users of the site frequently participate in harassment campaigns.
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" to see how websites looked in the past. Its founders, Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, developed the Wayback Machine to provide "universal access to all knowledge" by preserving archived copies of defunct web pages.
Social learning tools are tools used for pedagogical and andragogical purposes that utilize social software and/or social media in order to facilitate learning through interactions between individuals and systems. The idea of setting up "social learning tools" is to make education more convenient and widespread. It also allows an interaction between users and/or the software which can bring a different aspect to learning. People can acquire knowledge by distance learning tools, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, Khan Academy and so on. Social learning tools may mediate in formal or informal learning environments to help create connections between learners, instructors and information. These connections form dynamic knowledge networks. Social learning tools are used in schools for teaching/learning and in businesses for training. Within a school environment, the use of social learning tools can affect not only the user (student) but his/her caretaker as well as his/her instructor. It brings a different approach to the traditional way of learning which affects the student and his/her support circle. Companies also use social learning tools. They used them to improve knowledge transfer within departments and across teams. Businesses use a variety of these tools to create a social learning environment. They are also used in company settings to help improve team work, problem solving, and performance in stressful situations.
Behance, stylized as Bēhance, is a social media platform owned by Adobe whose main focus is to showcase and discover creative work.
AddThis was a free social bookmarking service that could be integrated into a website with the use of a web widget. Once the widget was added, visitors of a website using the service could bookmark or share an item using a variety of services, such as Facebook, MySpace, Pinterest, and Twitter. AddThis collected users' behavioural data, even if they do not share anything. The site reached 1.9 billion unique visitors monthly and was used by more than 15 million web publishers. The service operated under companies including AddThis, Inc., AddThis, LLC, and Clearspring Technologies, Inc. until the company's acquisition by Oracle Corporation on January 5, 2016. AddThis would continue to run until all services were terminated on May 31, 2023.
Chatroulette is an online chat website that pairs random users with a choice between two other users for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.
9gag is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Rob Beschizza is a British-American writer, artist and journalist, the editor of the culture website Boing Boing and the founder of txt.fyi, a publishing platform described by Wired as an example of "antisocial media". His works include minimalist video games, short stories, generative software that produces psychedelic art, wine descriptions, and journalistic euphemisms, among other subjects. Beschizza has appeared as a news commentator on television networks including NBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.
Odyssey is an American internet media company that operates based on a crowdsourced model, receiving articles from a base of thousands of volunteer authors and edited through their teams of volunteer, outsourced, and professional content strategists. The platform produces material covering topics such as politics, sports, fashion, technology, entertainment, business, science, and health.
