Towards a generic model for social computing and emergent characteristics

In the last few years we have witnessed the emergence of new predominately mobile based computing paradigm aiming to meet the needs of the broader society known as Social Computing. Still developing successful Social Computing applications remains more of an art than a science. This motivated us to explore underlying characteristics to better understand how successful well engineered Social Computing applications can be developed. By applying content analysis to well researched articles on popular Social Computing applications in reputed magazines we identified a range of characteristics and categorised these into application and emergent. The emergent characteristics were further divided into feelings and perceptions that arise in the user as a result of using the application to meet basic or secondary human need. We identified 4 dominant application characteristics, 3 to assist meeting the user needs; Social Interaction, Content Sharing, Action Taking and the 4th; Aggregate Knowledge to generate positive emergent characteristics. We also found all these application characteristics are supported by Rich Multimedia to enhance communication, Access Control for creating user defined groups and Content Personalisation to provide effective access to aggregated knowledge. Based on these insights we have synthesised a generic model for Social Computing applications. This understanding can now lead to form a systematic approach to developing Social Computing applications.