Games, Actions and Social Software. As seen through the lens of mathematics and logic. Presented as a discussion between characters. [more inside]
posted by jouke on Sep 27, 2009 - 3 comments

Yahoo!'s Christian Crumlish puts forward five principles of good social software design, and five anti-patterns, or ways to get it wrong. [more inside]
posted by acb on Aug 9, 2009 - 59 comments

Some say economics is changing so radically that attention is of more value than money or material wealth. If that's true, then should Paris Hilton and Britney Spears be considered role models? Must we each be stars in order to be a success, to get anything achieved, or to gain even the slightest traction?
posted by kmartino on Feb 28, 2008 - 32 comments

Party Builder. The Democratic party launches a suite of tools to keep in touch with politically active friends, find events near you, raise money and more.
posted by empath on Sep 5, 2006 - 18 comments

I can't work out if iKarma is a well-intentioned stab at applying the power of social software to the world of business, or simply a well-intentioned scrape at the bottom of the Web 2.0 barrel.
posted by Jofus on Apr 26, 2006 - 32 comments

Warning to chatroom users after libel award for man labelled a Nazi. "Mr Keith-Smith told the Guardian that he took action after a debate about the Iraq war in 2003 on a Yahoo! message board with about 100 members turned ugly. "She was very pro-Bush. Initially, she called me lard brain and I wasn't particularly concerned about that. Then she called me a Nazi," he said."
posted by gsb on Mar 23, 2006 - 45 comments

The Dumpster is "an interactive online visualization that attempts to depict a slice through the romantic lives of American teenagers. Using real postings extracted from millions of online blogs, visitors to the project can surf through tens of thousands of specific romantic relationships in which one person has "dumped" another." Launched yesterday at the Whitney. Frenetic social data browser with voyeuristic blog-sniffer available here
posted by jessamyn on Feb 15, 2006 - 14 comments

Finding good coffee - I am a big fan of both del.icio.us and good coffee (i.e. not over-roasted crud from Starbucks), so I was very happy to see the two combined in CafeSpot which calls itself "a social guide to independent cafes, coffee shops, restaurants and more".
posted by arete on Aug 10, 2005 - 11 comments

Peer to Patent (PtoP): A Modest Proposal This modest proposal harnesses social reputation and collaborative filtering technology to create a peer review system of scientific experts ruling on innovation. [via beSpacific]
posted by MLIS on Jul 16, 2005 - 11 comments

Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy delicious and incorporate that?
posted by mathowie on Jun 28, 2005 - 28 comments

Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software is Clay Shirky's latest essay on social software. It describes some interesting experiments and avenues for experimentation in reducing flaming in social discourse software. A prime example is Bumplist.
posted by turbodog on Nov 8, 2004 - 7 comments

Social software for the party animal.
posted by timeistight on May 8, 2004 - 7 comments

Flickr! First launched during the week of no-metafilter, Flickr is a new kind of social software application (in the tradition of Friendster or Orkut) - but, after making friends and forming groups, it actually gives you something to do! Created by a team led by Mefi's own sylloge, Flickr is also a collaboration focused Flash-based application that allows you to share picture files with friends, comment on them and post them directly to your weblog. An exposed set of services is also leading to a host of interesting ideas.
posted by vacapinta on Mar 12, 2004 - 16 comments

Need to get something off your chest? Group hug!
posted by Tlogmer on Jan 19, 2004 - 2 comments