SYNOPSIS:
Is the phenomena known as “Social Software” ready to be decoupled, or opened up? I’ll go on record saying “No”. Why? Well, for one, because everyone else is saying yes, and I like to be different, but more importantly, because “The Theory” leads me to believe that.
I could be wrong, and that’s OK. I may even be trying to apply the wrong theory to this particular phenomena. I want to inspire thought and conversation here.
One reason I may be wrong, is that software is much better understood then it was just a few years ago, and is behaving much more like modeling-clay in the concept car studio, (thanks in part to better software management and thinkers like [Joel Spolsky] and others) so a software capability may be able to decouple parts of the value chain while leaving other parts available for optimization.
So give this a read and join the conversation in the Comments section at the bottom. (more…)