Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web App

Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web App

We've heard about ethnography primer. Now the buzz is about social design.

Social design is a subset of design that focuses on the social lives of users. It deals with the activities, behaviors, and motivations of people who work and play together through software interfaces.

In the last couple of years, web sites and apps focusing on social interactions have become increasingly popular. We've been seeing more and more designs that allow users to collaborate and share what they're doing with others, including such popular sites as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and Craigslist.

But only recently have design teams started to understand the complexities of dealing with thousands or millions of users who want to connect with their peers and coworkers in new and exciting ways. Several prominent incidents, such as the Facebook newsfeed blowup, have shown just how complex the social issues are.

Joshua Porter, an expert on the issues related to Social Design, has written a fantastic article outlining many of the common pitfalls that lead to failure when building social applications.

> Link to Joshua Porter's blog