Building Social Web Applications

Preface

Over the past decade, the Web has become an increasingly social place. Social activity has moved beyond message boards to become a wider part of the Internet. Most people have heard of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; indeed, many people now have a profile on a social network. The term social media is part of our lives for better or for worse, and expressions such as citizen journalism are commonplace. Facebook alone has more than 200 million registered people.^[1] What is different in this new world? People will come to you with a prior existence; they are on the Web already.

You need to recognize and incorporate this change into your design and development processes. Your website needs to offer something genuinely useful and become a home away from home for your community; the people coming to your site need to feel comfortable talking to other people there and keen to come back for more.

This book is about making applications in this new Web, frequently referred to as Web 2.0. Much heat and light (and a lot of hot air) have been spent on defining exactly what Web 2.0 is, but this book will focus on the social web. Over these 18 chapters, we’ll look at designing systems that support social human behaviors. I’ll be using terms such as social software and community to describe what we are building and to reinforce the idea that there are people out there, beyond the servers.

Design As the Primary Approach

This is primarily a “design is how it works” book, based on my experience ...