Stowe Boyd has an extensive post titled, “Efficiency v Belonging: The Real Heart of Social Tools” where he proposes that many of the critics of social tools are chasing a red herring when they claim social tools do not improve personal productivity. Stowe correctly points out that this “lynch mob” is barking up the wrong tree.
Social tools were never really designed to improve productivity or efficiency (some may in fact do so), but instead he suggests that social tools “are about social involvement, learning and enlarging perspectives through connection…”
My favorite social tools (that don’t save me time) include: Upcoming.org, Wikipedia and Flickr. Why? They help me stay connected. In the case of Yahoo’s Upcoming and Flickr, they help me connect to a small group of people who I care about. In the case of Wikipedia it helps me stay connected to the world. Just ask my wife if adding pictures to Flickr help me save time…
Dan Saffer, senior interaction designer at Adaptive Path, has a new book coming out called Designing for Interaction. We met up at the AP offices when I was in town last and had a great chat about what makes for great interaction design, how you allow for (encourage?) hackability, and much more. The book was an excellent introduction for me (the non-designer software dabbler) into the current thinking about user experience & interaction.
For more, check out Dan’s blog, the AP blog, and the interviews Dan has conducted for the book. Dan & I will also be doing a panel with Kit Seeborg & Jeremiah Owyang this month at WebVisions 2006.
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Super stoked to be speaking at WebVisions 2006 in Portland this July. Not only are there going to be rockstar speakers I’m looking forward to talking with (like our pal Dan Cederholm, MeFi man Matt Haughey, Matt Mullenweg, Derek Powazek, Andy Baio, Tom Vander Wal and, many, many more), but it’s in Portland, a place I love. (Early bird admission is super cheap — only $125 through June 30.)
Kit Seeborg has put together a great panel: Let Go, Jump In: Community Marketing Strategies for Empowered Customers. The lineup: me, Kit, Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path, and Jeremiah Owyang, social media evangelist from Hitachi. Awesome.
Learn more about WebVisions 2006. Check out the show blog.
While you could always read Peterme, JJG, Monstro, Odannyboy or other blogs by the wunderkinder @ Adaptive Path, now they have a new group blog. Can you say subscribed? Oh. Yeah. Baby.