Social Age
Encyclopedia
Social Age encompasses both societal and technological changes succeeding the Information age
. It is diffident from the Information age as it gives more prominence to social factors when adopting and/or extending technology and information. It further broadens the definition of Attention Age because social age focuses on many forms of societal interactions including collaboration and sharing.
technologies are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, socialize, learn, and collaborate to create a better world while propelling us to the social age of societal development. Social age revolves around society, its people, and their needs where the technology is adopted, extended, or invented as a tool to achieve those needs. These changes are enabling people to express themselves in creative ways, stay in touched with loved ones, gain/give attention, foster sharing and collaboration, unite for a common cause, etc.
Though some people believe that these changes are only relevant in social interactions or to Generation Y
and Generation Z
, they have a much broader impact in many areas such as media, business, marketing, politics, social welfare, etc. Some of the examples include CNN iReport and Blogs, Wiki
s, blog
s, and private social networking site maintained by businesses for their customers and employees, President Barack Obama's campaign, and DARPA Network Challenge.
Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
. It is diffident from the Information age as it gives more prominence to social factors when adopting and/or extending technology and information. It further broadens the definition of Attention Age because social age focuses on many forms of societal interactions including collaboration and sharing.
Contributing Factors
Unprecedented technological advancements that are leading to resource rich and mobile computing devices, decreasing communication cost, and Web 2.0Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
technologies are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, socialize, learn, and collaborate to create a better world while propelling us to the social age of societal development. Social age revolves around society, its people, and their needs where the technology is adopted, extended, or invented as a tool to achieve those needs. These changes are enabling people to express themselves in creative ways, stay in touched with loved ones, gain/give attention, foster sharing and collaboration, unite for a common cause, etc.
Though some people believe that these changes are only relevant in social interactions or to Generation Y
Generation Y
Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation , Generation Next, Net Generation, or Echo Boomers, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere...
and Generation Z
Generation Z
Generation Z is a common name in the US and other Western nations for the group of people born from the early 1990s through to the present....
, they have a much broader impact in many areas such as media, business, marketing, politics, social welfare, etc. Some of the examples include CNN iReport and Blogs, Wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s, blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, and private social networking site maintained by businesses for their customers and employees, President Barack Obama's campaign, and DARPA Network Challenge.
Taxonomy
Social age manifests in many forms and so far we have seen only its inception. Below is some of the well known areas that of social age applications:- Social networkSocial networkA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
s - any interaction between individuals or organizations, e.g., FacebookFacebookFacebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
, OrkutOrkutOrkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships... - Social mediaSocial mediaThe term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
- any form of media for social interaction - WikiWikiA wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
- e.g., WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,... - BlogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
- e.g., Blogger (service)Blogger (service)Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish... - Micro-bloggingMicro-bloggingMicroblogging is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size...
- e.g., TwitterTwitterTwitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July... - Video sharing - e.g., YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, MetacafeMetacafeMetacafe is a web site that specializes in short-form video entertainment in the categories of movies, video games, sports, music and TV.The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv... - Social marketingSocial marketingSocial marketing is the systematic application of marketing, along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Social marketing can be applied to promote merit goods, or to make a society avoid demerit goods and thus to promote society's well being as...
- any form of marking through society - Amazon.com recommendations
- Social clouds - any form of recommendation by community, more popular ones will survive
- Social newsSocial newsA social news website is a type of website that features user-submitted stories that are ranked based on popularity.-Slashdot:Slashdot, started in 1997, was one of the first social news websites. It focuses mainly on science and technology related news. Users can submit stories, and the editors...
- e.g., DiggDiggDigg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems... - Social bookmarkingSocial bookmarkingSocial bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
- e.g., StumbleUponStumbleUponStumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.Toolbar versions exist for...
, CiteULikeCiteULikeCiteULike is based on the principle of social bookmarking and is aimed to promote and to develop the sharing of scientific references amongst researchers. In the same way that it is possible to catalog web pages or photographs , scientists can share information on academic papers with specific... - Community cloud computing - where community put computing resources to perform a tack that helps community
- Peer-to-peerPeer-to-peerPeer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
computing - SETISETIThe search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life...
- World Community GridWorld Community GridWorld Community Grid is an effort to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle scientific research projects that benefit humanity...