Designing Social Interfaces

Part V. But Wait...There’s More!

The world of social media software is constantly changing. Increases in bandwidth, web technology advances, the browser becoming the operating system, and mobile devices that give users instant online access wherever they are all provide more opportunities for creating interesting, viral, sticky applications that people can’t live without. In the time we have taken to write this book, hundreds of new sites and applications have launched in the hopes of spreading and growing like Facebook or Twitter.

What we are seeing is an ever-increasing amount of people experimenting and making mashups with different kinds of social features, interwoven into just about any kind of content or service you can imagine. Some of them are amazingly inventive, and others are downright weird. With all these different opportunities and rehashes of social features, just where should designers be paying attention?

The breadth of software being developed for consumers today is only half the story. Opportunities lie with mashups and open software. Areas that traditionally have been ghettoized in traditional web software design are mobile and enterprise. Often forgotten or addressed as an afterthought, these areas provide rich and interesting challenges to creating social experiences.

If you want to see the future of interactive interfaces, look to gaming. Game designers have the liberty to experiment and Darwinian competitive pressures. The ideas they come up with and prove out ...