Datasheet

Schwartz c01.tex V3 - 12/26/2008 11:38am Page 7
Chapter 1: Social Computing
Figure 1-3
Social Communication
Inside of the general social computing concept, there is a category of applications designed specifically
to enable and enhance one-to-one or one-to-many communication.Thisisdifferentfromsocialmedia
because the communication itself is not based on a media file. Some examples of social communication
applications include Twitter and FriendFeed. Social communication applications are distinct from instant
messaging applications in that conversations are normally not private. These applications create a pub-
licly searchable stream or feed of all incoming communications to an individual user that anyone can
reply to or comment on. Figure 1-4 demonstrates this public communication feed on the Twitter web site.
Applications that implement the concept of social communication can usually be identified by the pres-
ence of the following features:
T Visible username
T Feed of personal communications
7