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Ross MayfieldChairman, President and Co-founderNovember 2007

Made of People

(also made of people)

Social Software is Made of People• Bottom up • Augmentation, not automation• Gets out of the way• Share control of information architecture

Social Software adapts to its environment rather than requiring its environment to adapt to it (circa 2002)

Complexity is in the social network

Vendors tried to put it in the software

Social Software keeps complexity in the social network. Where it belongs. Only encoding simple rules to yield emergence

Search

Linking

Authoring

Tagging

Extensions

Signals

Enterprise 2.0 is freeform social software adapted for organizations -- Andrew McAfee

The greatest pattern of Web 2.0 is sharing control to create value

Only one problem

Well, maybe two

Innovation in Social Software began with open source

Commons-Based Peer Production, Benkler:• Markets drive production through price signal• Firms drive production through contracts• Social networks are driven through social signals

Decoupling Decisions

The most important decisions cannot be automated

Sharing control over information can lead to more productive decision processes, and better decisions

Sharing control over decisions for enterprises is primarily for social goods

Social Goods

Social Goods are created when the means of production and/or distribution is broadly available• Price trends towards free• Knowledge is distributed

In these gift economies, or social markets, consider sharing control over decisions• Valuation and distribution is social

Markets are social

Implications for Process

For a given business process• What if we made it more transparent?• What if we made it more participatory?

For social goods, participation can include those outside the firewall• The best experts on your products not on payroll• The hidden experts can volunteer outside their

job description

WorkParticipation

Brittanica

ShareParticipation

Open

Participation

Wikipedia

To get the benefits of sharing control and being open, you have to move towards transparency

Socialtext ranked as most visionary vendor

Socialtext recognized as leading Enterprise 2.0 company in terms of ability to execute – behind only IBM, Microsoft & BEA

Socialtext also part of Intel’s SuiteTwo bundle, which scored as more visionary than any other vendor

Gartner identifies 'social software‘ as one of top 10 strategic technologies for 2008

Social Software is Made of People• To be implicit is human • Augmentation, not automation• Some decisions should not be coded• Make software, and sharing in work,

more like a cocktail party…

Thank you

ross.typepad.com

ross.mayfield@socialtext.com