As far as the rest of your criticism goes, I’d say the following. I’m aware of Tenantspin, and intend to look more closely at it in a piece of research I’m just beginning. But Tenantspin exists for residents of similar socio-economic status, and is shaped accordingly. It is specifically motivated by the fear of social exclusion, and to promote regeneration.

Skyhouse is quite different, and our project is too. Firstly, this is a new design for a new community; it isn’t a matter of social entrepreneurs entering an already problematic community, but a question of how to create an appropriate design to complement a brand new building. Secondly (and most importantly) Skyhouse will be very diverse (40% key worker, living side by side with yuppies), which is the central social ‘problem’ (or opportunity) we were addressing when we came to the conclusion that tasks are most important. We’d be obliged to ask who would actually *use* something like tenantspin in Skyhouse, and whether it could end up creating greater division, not less.

I accept fully that something like EBay or Outlook does not create a sufficient basis for community, but then we were as much looking to establish what social software can’t do, as what it can. Our question was not “how can social software most fully grasp and support the dynamics of a good community?”, but “in what instance may it be appropriate to use social software to further the social ends of an architectural design?”. We were looking from the opposite end of the telescope.

I actually agree with you; top-down social software *is* limited, but we were specifically asking what legitimate top-down social software would have to look like. And an ‘official’ version of Ebay is a less scary proposition than an ‘official’ version of friendster, don’t you think?

Task-based social software finds its best expression in office-based systems like Outlook. I learnt this from Smartgroups, which was essentially a friendly set of office tools mapped onto a discussion engine. Smartgroups users use the diary, vote and calendar functions a lot.

But crucially these services are used as an adjunct to the main discussion tool – as a way of organising ideas or events that have fallen out of random discussions. The primary social/cultural focus of Smartgroups remains.

Whereas the brutal efficiency of Outlook has a different focus, with the emphasis being on task organisation rather than discussion. I spend half my Outlook time requesting, accepting or declining meetings, not engaging in discussions.

This is what I was explaining to the innovation team we were working with – the difference between task efficiency and social efficiency. Task efficiency in offices is desirable. Task efficiency in social interactions is not always deisrable.

The person using a combination of fixed-line phone, email, mobile phone and SMS to organise an evening out may, on a superficial level, benefit from an all-in-one tool that allowed them to send an Outlook-style meeting invite to everyone and the efficiency that offers. But when you actually look at what happens in these situations, it’s exactly the swamping of contact across many sources around the organiser that defines their status in their social group. Efficiency would prevent this. Secretly, they like their role as the centre of this tangle of communication.

As we know, certain age groups define their social status by the volume of messages they receive. Social software that replaces this volume with efficiency risks taking the social out of the software.