Greetings, all. As I am the Practice Manager for Avalon’s newest practice area (Social Computing), I thought it is only appropriate to share what I am going to focus our efforts on and how I view our evolving world of social computing. Like any evolving technology, social computing means many different to many different people.

As I write this blog in the beginning of 2009 I have to assume that the current perception of social computing is Facebook. My assumption is obviously not an act of genius (quite the contrary) but a simple observation of everyone I know (spanning many generations) coming to the realization that this site is simply a life-changing platform. I will assume if you are reading this you are already somewhat familiar with Facebook and will not bore you with its capabilities. I am much more interested in how to extend similar capabilities (and more importantly, the “intent”) into the professional space.

I could easily turn this first entry into a War and Peace epic (ok… I am probably dating myself with this comment) but I will stop with the following outline of how I view the current Social Computing space and how I will attempt to break it down in future posts. My proposed tiers are not necessarily mutually exclusive but hopefully provide a framework for options to approach this new space. So this is my “stake in the ground” to make sense around the current state of Professional Social Computing technology.

• Tier 1 – Social Networking components
  • Wikis, IM, Forums, etc.
• Tier 2 – Social Networking platforms
• Tier 3 – Targeted Social Applications (e.g. Social Search, Social CRM)
• Tier 4 – Semantic Analysis platforms (i.e. tools to analyze/report on unstructured text