In recent years, web community platforms that pertain to the emerging class of social software have gained considerable popularity among lead users on the Web. Social software platforms focus on supporting information exchange in online social networks by providing services for information search, publication and sharing, and collaborative classification of personal information in individual users’ social contexts. Hence, individual users can link together and exchange information with selected contacts like co-workers, friends or family members by means of social software. However, functional features and information models of social software platforms reveal limitations from the individual user’s perspective with regard to managing distributed personal information, that is, most significantly lack of service integration, flexible metadata management and cross-platform relation management of personal information.
Within the scope of this thesis, the concept of user-centered social software as an innovative approach for personal information management support in online social networks is developed. The basis for this concept is established by the characterization of different kinds of social software and the extension of personal information management activities to information exchange in online social networks referred to as social information management. The user-centered social software model therefore proposes an integrated view on all available information from the individual user’s perspective and encompasses services for the acquisition of relevant information, controlled information dissemination to selected contacts and flexible metadata and semantic information relation management concerning the organization of distributed personal information.
The characteristics of user-centered social software are further substantiated by means of a software architecture design and are illustrated on a user interface prototype, termed Social Organizer.
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