Situational Software
We’ve recently launched Socialtext where I work (a fast growing, dynamic flavor creation company in the Midwest). It has been interesting to see how this advanced social-wiki, micro-messaging, blogging, content management platform is being adopted by different teams in different ways. Because the platform is very easy to use and very adaptable, I see non-programmers using the platform tools to build their own social applications (project coordination, team communication, performance dashboards, locating someone with expertise, organizing bodies of knowledge, sharing training videos, building reputation capital, etc.). Each team is getting a feel for how to customize their own content. This feels very fresh and built-for-particular-needs compared to using impersonal, generic applications designed for no one in particular.
Thank you, Socialtext, for all your hard work developing and hosting (for us) the platform, which frees us up to do the ever-and-always-changing work of organizing information in a social-technically-enhanced way to help us move faster and make better decisions together.
This post was inspired by a 2004 Clay Shirky blog post titled Situated Software and a wikipedia entry on Situational Applications.
