Social Content

Posted on May 19, 2008 by inn0nate

As I talk about the BIG VISION for BricaBox, I often find myself repeating a definition for “social content website” — because that’s the scope of our platform, and those are the kinds of sites we set out to power.

Currently, my best definition of “social content” is this:

“Websites where a group of people collaborate on a base of content.”

While I’ve thought about including a qualifier like “… using a common format” to the end of that definition, I think it’s pretty good right now.

Here are some examples of “social content” sites, so you can see the scope of this genre:

  • Wikipedia is a “social content” website
  • YouTube fits this bill
  • Yelp is an example
  • Scribd is a social content site for documents
  • 43things is a social content site
  • Digg is also a social content site
  • Aviary is a social content platform

What’s your definition of “social content sites”? Have you ever thought of all these sites being under one genre?

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  • I don’t think I agree with your definition, only because it seems as though it would also encompass “commenting.” At HuffPost our commentors can produce more than 800 comments on individual stories. Under your current definition discussions would be considered “a base of content.”

    Potentially, you might look into what kind of content you’re considering – who is it for, or is simply the use of “social features” and the resulting end product -- or is there a different end-goal?

    Do "social content sites" solve social problems?
  • Chrissie,

    I think you make a great point about comments and commenting as a form
    of social content.

    If I didn't above, I should have included bulletin boards and forums
    in my list. Comments to a blog post are one form of social content
    appended as meta-data to content.

    Good catch.
  • Could you expand on how wikipedia, 43things, and aviary are social conent platforms. It'd be useful that you build a list of social content platforms, and how/why they are.

    Youtub - video
    Flickr - pics
    Yelp - rest reviews
    Digg - articles/posts?
    Delicious/Diigo? - bookmarks?
  • Wetpaint is a social content platform of sorts, right? "build a community around whatever you love"
  • Indeed.

    Still digesting their funding, by the way. I wonder what's working for
    them... if they think this enterprise approach will be the long-term
    money maker.

    This will be interesting to watch... and more interesting to compete
    with :-)
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