Social Software: Facilitating Information-, Identity- and Relationship Management

From its beginnings in the 1960ies and 1970ies, the Internet has been used for communication and collaborative work. While early adopters mostly worked within academia and the military, its rapid diffusion within the last 15 years has broadened the user base massively. Nowadays, the Internet is a widely used technological infrastructure for information retrieval, transaction and interaction, with E-Mail, newsgroups, discussion boards and chats being major services for interpersonal communication. Contrary to pessimistic, sometimes even dystopistic positions, these modes of computer-mediated interaction do not per se cause deficient social relationships, but can rather be the foundation for enduring social networks with complex internal differentiation (Wellman, 1999; Stegbauer, 2001; Thiedeke, 2003). During the last years, a growing number of online-based applications has been developed that facilitate the creation, articulation and maintenance of social networks. They are often referred to as „social software”, but up to now there is neither an accepted definition of this rather vague term, nor is there a comprehensive analytical framework to describe and explain the social dynamics that come with the institutionalization of these tools. This paper starts with a proposal for a definition and its analytical elements, concentrating on the affordances social software allows (Chapter 2). It will then sketch an analytical model of „social