Towards a Context-Aware Vertical Social Software Ecosystem

Advances in software and hardware technology open up new potential for context-aware vertical social software. Companies are facing the challenge to incorporate these ideas into their existing software solutions. In this paper, we propose a reference architecture for Context-Aware Vertical Social Software platforms to facilitate reuse and enable synergies across different existing and new social software applications and workflows. This architecture enables external software developers to meet the needs of improving existing products and services of companies. Moreover, we present the lessons we learned from the implementation of such a platform and two case studies in collaboration with a large industry partner.