There are no categories
This site does not, on the whole, seek to categorise the applications which it presents. While it is possible to come up with a typology of tools (and several websites which report or list applications do so – see Finding Tools or, for example, the listing at OEDB of 101 tools), this approach misses the fundamental point of Web 2.0: applications work in the ways that people make them, rather than in a set way. Moreover, because most good Web 2.0 applications contain several different kinds of affordances, such as content creation and management, publishing, communication and conversation and so on, they are often only vaguely amenable to categorisation.
For example, the application listphile enables people to create lists of like items, either individually or collectively, either for reading or for editing, with facilities for both private and public messages to and from contributors and readers. These lists can be published or embedded in other web publishing applications. Communities can emerge around a particular list, or not. The lists themselves both draw on available online information and, of course, contribute to it. The roles that users can play involve both creating and receiving the information, but also can include curating or managing it in some way. Therefore, it is impossible to decide ‘what kind’ of application listphile is. It could be used as a discussion forum (like a bulletin board); it could be used as the focal point of a community or online network (like groupware); it could be used to ‘present’ information (like a web-published document). It is all of these things, or none, or some, depending on how it is used.
But functional categorisation can be done
However, in the course of the research which identified the best tools which are presented here, I came to the conclusion that a generalised categorisation is possible, that of the digital ecology of the web as a knowledge networking system. Within this functional typology (where the focus is on understanding what functions web applications can perform, rather than what kind of website or tool they are), I identified four key functions summarised as: information pumps; cognitive engines; collaborative environments; and publications. Any web application or site can be all four at once, depending on how it is being used and at what point in the process of ‘circulation’ of information it is involved.
To the extent that contingent categorisation is valuable, to better understand a system at a given moment and as it appears, rather than objectively denoting its entire existence, the following categories of web application can be used:
- When applications pump information (feeding into knowledge work) they can aggregate other sources (automatically or otherwise, as with wikimindmap); they can filter information in various ways (like newsmap); they can feed or push it to users (for example an RSS feed); and they can create and collect original information (such as a survey tool like survs)
- When applications serve as cognitive engines, working with individual users to ‘do’ knowledge work, they can involve varying degrees of structured knowledge work (like xtimeline, where the timeline format does a lot of the work); creative expression (as with the amination tool xtranormal); freeform writing in which the lack of structure is its own structural device (as on a wiki); shared information management (diigo); or provide frames for review and reflection (reviewbasics); or give transformational services to shed new light on known data (manyeyes for visualisation). Remember, however, that it’s the meeting of technological affordance and human purpose that determines exactly how the cognitive engineering occurs.
- Collaborative environments are often built around or through such applications, but others are more specifically designed to serve that purpose. Real-time interaction channels (todaysmeet) bring people together at the same time; distributed environments (like groups) precisely avoid that real-time presence to enable interactions across time as well as space; purpose public communities exist whose particular reason for existence disaggregates them from the general array of online collaborative tools (flickr is not unlike this form of community, given its photo-sharing focus); and transaction management services, such as wiggio, enable highly specific groupwork.
I presented some of these ideas at the 2010 Network Learning conference:
- Finally publication channels deliberately emphasise the presentation of work produced from information, by cognitive engineering, through or aided by collaboration. Slideshare, while having community and creative features, is a specific publishing channel; so too is twitter, even as it also serves as the home for conversations. The latter is a transformed ‘old’ media channel (slideshows moving online); the latter is a dedicatedly ‘new’ media channel, unlike almost anything we have had before – even though it does remediate oldfashioned chat and the SMS message, proving that nothing is entirely new.
Mind42 presents a perfect example of the way all four functions come together. Mindmapping is a specific cognitive tool which creates a structure within which the work is done; yet the application is collaborative, enabling conversations and co-creation to occur within its own confines; the finished result is publishable (and the mind42 website is a publishing channel for such maps) and, once public, serves as an information source, filtering content in a particular way for future users.
Conclusion
Categorising social media and web 2.0 applications is, ultimately, a fruitless task if the goal is to ‘pin them down’ for this or that purpose. However, understanding the different functions that they can perform, so as to then design tasks which ‘call’ on those functions and make clear to users (especially students) how that function is to be operationalised, is very important. Obviously some applications suit some purposes better — but to simply ask ‘I want students to do a presentation online, so where are the presentation tools?’ is the wrong kind of question. Rather, the question should be ‘what is the best (most efficient, most interesting, most engaging) way in which this group of students, in this class, studying this subject matter can create online presentations?’ The answer could lie with many of the applications listed here. Just be conscious that application chosen will have its own unique features
