Research and emerging trends in social computing

Social computing has emerged as a broad area of research in HCI and CSCW, encompassing systems that gather, store, process, re-present, and disseminate social information that is distributed across social collectivities such as teams, communities, organizations, cohorts, populations, and markets. Social computing systems are likely to contain components that support and make visible social features such as identity, reputation, trust, accountability, presence, social roles, expertise, knowledge, and ownership. We see social computing transforming the net by creating a pervasive technical infrastructure that includes people, organizations, and their activities as fundamental system components, and enabling identity, behavior, social relationships, and experience to be used as resources for activity. In this talk, I selectively review emerging applications and trends in social computing, and discuss current research in our group and beyond that is driving and is driven by the emerging vision of social computing. © 2005 IEEE.