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Schwartz c01.tex V3 - 12/26/2008 11:38am Page 18
Chapter 1: Social Computing
any farther from the truth. Social computing applications not only provide a real business value; social
applications can also provide a feeling of ownership within the company’s employees.
Some of the more tangible common business values are as follows:
T Promote direct communication between subject matter experts and individuals with questions
within companies
T Entice users to visit and revisit online material as they keep up with comments and other content
changes
T Provide marketing of products or services
T Provide better communication for public relations or public affairs departments
T Build an understanding of partners or customers
Business value is something that does not always have to be measured in hard dollars. For this reason,
many companies and consultants want to know what the clear return on investment (ROI) with these
applications can be.
Enabling Technologies of Social Computing
Many technologies make the capabilities of social computing applications possible in today’s envi-
ronment. These technologies have evolved over time and will continue to change and grow as new
capabilities become available in Internet browsers as well as operating systems.
JavaScript
One of the primary technologies used on the web during the dot-com days to make more interactive
sites was JavaScript. JavaScript allowed developers to program code that would be downloaded as
part of the page’s content and run inside the Internet user’s browser. This ability to run in the browser
makes JavaScript a client-side technology as opposed to server-side code, which runs only on a central
server such as a process-fetching data from a database. This client-side code is a critical part of many
applications that want to provide rich interactive experiences for the user. There are countless appli-
cations, including numerous social computing applications, which take advantage of JavaScript. An
easy-to-imagine example is JavaScript code that lets the user confirm friend associations or view pictures
without having to wait long periods of time for the page to refresh on each click.
The two most common ways to add JavaScript to a web page is to either make a programmatic reference
on the web page to an external file or actually place the JavaScript directly in the web page in ques-
tion. The code below is a sample of some of the actual SharePoint JavaScript files that are referenced by
SharePoint pages and loaded whenever a page is opened.
<script type = "text/javascript" language = "javascript" src = "/
_layouts/1033/core.js?rev
= S5dt4K8TJGVTYU9HrW6enw%3D%3D" defer></script>
<script type
= "text/javascript" language = "javascript" src = "/
_layouts/portal.js?rev
= cRI8b5r5N%2BkLhIuWR03ICg%3D%3D"></script>
<script type
= "text/javascript" language = "javascript" src = "/
_layouts/1033/ie55up.js?rev
= Ni7%2Fj2ZV%2FzCvd09XYSSWvA%3D%3D"></script>
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