Grasping Social Patterns

and social antipatterns (or antisocial patterns?)

Christian CrumlishYahoo! Design Pattern LibraryYahoo! Developer Network

Ignite! SF, April 22, 2008

Social Antipatterns

Don’t break email!

don’t:

do:

Social media is always awkward when it’s new

“Hello?”

“Is that you, Mr. Gilbert?”

“Hello?”

http://flickr.com/photos/dhbress/87105370/

ubiquity

a social moment?

Permission-based stalking

Oh hai! Will u be my frend (y/n)?

laughingsquid tweeted: dear cryptic username, I

would have a much better chance of recognizing you if your friend request lited

your name…

natekoechley tweeted: @mediajunkie I hate that I need to spam my friends with adds/invites each

time I join a new service. Painful bar to entry, often

too tall.

Teach a man to be phished

Friends you may know / power-law

fimoculous tweeted: The “people you should know”

list on Facebook is actually a list of people

your hate.”

Portable social networks?

• Do let me take my network with me wherever I go.

• Don’t make me reassert everything each time I go somewhere new

Personal social networks?

• Beware the unintended consequences that come from removing data from originating context!

• Also, can we start saying “personal social networks”?

(same initials, yay!)

Auto-faux-pas

• notification of rejection

• unsubbing / delinking – or caught by the re-follow

• relationship status changed to “it’s complicated”– I tried doing this on Facebook so I could capture a

funny screenshot for this slide and my wife was not amused

“Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic:

‘Open Social is neither open nor social.’ Discuss.”

“Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: ‘OpenSocial is neither open nor social.’ Discuss.”

Open social architecture

• Enable interop– vs. antipattern: lock-in

• Open APIs– expose your hooks

• Honest broker – “fire eagle is

“middlewhere”*

Photo by Tal Bright: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright/199521322*coinage by Leonard Lin, via twitter

Open social architecture

• Provide utility– enable others to plug in

• Build on existing practices– semantics and microformats,

conventions such as rss, standards

• Don’t try to own everything

Photo by Tal Bright: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright/199521322

“social” design, guerilla usability. Live inside your social apps, design them

from the inside out.

Thank You!

Christian Crumlish

design.yahoo.com