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
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