Social Publishing ≠ Social Networking - So What Is It?
John Willis recently published a post that equates social publishing with social networking. While the post is pretty good, and I agree with most of the points, I need to correct the bit about the definition of social publishing. It’s way more than social networking. Let me explain.
Social publishing is a blend of three categories:
1) web content management
2) social software (blogs, wikis, social networking platforms, forums, etc.)
3) web app frameworks
A social publishing system combines the above into a cohesive set of technology for assembling a web site that provides structure for people to express ideas and engage each other in proven patterns. Just a few of the patterns I see today are:
1) Wiki pattern: several people jointly editing a document or group of documents
2) Forum pattern: a structured discussion about an idea or document
3) Blog pattern: a person publishing personal opinions and observations on a regular basis
4) Article pattern: a writer and editor moving an article or story through an approval chain
5) Custom content pattern: a custom content type like an event, a press release, a conference session, etc that is created and published.
6) Social networking pattern: people publishing personal profiles, creating and maintaining their digital social graph, and interacting within their network
Things like RSS, tagging, comments, rating, voting, search, and input formats/editors permeate all of these patterns and need to be built in to the architecture. And user management, roles, and access control underly the entire system.
It is my belief that most modern web sites (from internal team collaboration to public-facing niche social networks) will be a convergence of these patterns. Further, I believe that high order software systems that take stock of this entire landscape are going to be in high demand. I also believe that acquiring completely separate software systems to implement each of the patterns is more costly and risky than using a unified system that handles all of the patterns well. And lastly, I believe that Drupal is the leader in this space today, and has a great shot at becoming the de facto standard social publishing system for the LAMP tribe. The combination of great architecture, the open source business model, the incredible community momentum, and hopefully a little marketing/packaging/support help from Acquia should be compelling.
I’m still gathering my thoughts on this whole social publishing concept, but the more I think about it, the more conviction I get. In discussions with press and analysts over the past two weeks, I’ve seen considerable validation of the underlying trends at work here. I look forward to your feedback.
Thank you, Jeff. “Social Publishing” is a much more descriptive way of referring to what Drupal does than “Web 2.0”. With your permission, I would like to use this post as the first draft of a page on our website, helping our clients understand Drupal’s advantages over Joomla. The page address is gamefacewebdesign.com/pages/social-publishing. I’ve fully attributed it at the top. Folks would get to this from gamefacewebdesign.com/pages/drupal.
May I do this with your blessing?
-Bram
P.S. - Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Drupal had a “wiki-page-creator” module, so that if one creates a page with a link to a new page that isn’t created yet, one could click on that link and create a new page with that URL path?
Re the wiki-page-creator - http://drupal.org/project/freelinking
Done :)
Adding to Greg’s comments, I would also recommend (especially for those new to Drupal) to check out the Wiki installation profile: http://drupal.org/project/drupal_wiki .
Done Twice :)
Go for it. You have my blessing.
Jeff,
Great job here. This is probably the first time I've seen an all inclusive definition for social publishing that didn't take all day to read and decipher.
Where would you put the functions of document management and media/file management (management of images, video, music files, etc)? Would document management and media management fall into their own "pattern" or would you consider them as part of the architecture/system (as you have RSS, comments, user management)?
-Bryan
Thanks. You raise a good question. I think that document management is a distinct pattern where the editing is taking place somewhere else (like in a word processor) but the versioning and metadata assignment is happening in the social publishing system. Additionally, I think that document sharing and review is yet another pattern, where the artifact is considered final as published, but visitors can comment, rate, tag, search, and share it (think Flickr and YouTube or Scribd).
Let’s keep up the hunt for new patterns!
Nice one Jeff.
It’s so nice to finally have a way for describing what it is we build with Drupal. Neither a content management system, nor a social network…better than both. A social publishing system.
So many times I’ve tried to say “Well it’s like a sort of content management system that users interact with through a social network”…no need no more.
Great post and it really adds greatly needed definition. Today, there is broad recognition of the importance of social networking but similar to the term “web 2.0” it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It might be interesting to consider the level of authorship or the user engagement associated with each element of the social publishing framework.
Great description! I’ve been trying to articulate this for my own self for some time, and you have neatly defined it. I think “Social Publishing” is a term that absolutely needs to be introduced to our professional lexicon.
cheers,
Geoff
Jeff,
I can’t get what you wrote in this post out of my head. I couldn’t agree more with Geoff’s statement that you’ve helped articulate the use of a term that many of us have struggled putting our hands around for some time now. I’m hoping to do my part for spreading the word: http://cmsreport.com/node/1643 .
Thanks!
I’d add to the list of patterns…
Jeff,
Glad I could help out :)
It seems to me you are missing my main point. You can define patterns and redefine the lexicon all day long however until you identify who you are you are never going to become the next "Adobe". Alfresco is doc, SugarCRM is crm. What is Aquia?. Don't get me wrong I love Drupal and you guys are the best hope for its success. However,IMHO, until you guys define a killer app other than the framework I believe you will have a very steep hill to climb.
However, honestly, what do I know and this is just my opinion. Good luck...
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