Before revision: Whereas it is difficult to give an exact definition for the field, the participants of the First International Workshop on Social Software Engineering and Applications (SoSEA 2008) proposed the following characterization: Community-centered: Software is produced and consumed by and/or for a community rather than focusing on individuals Collaboration/collectiveness: Exploiting the collaborative and collective capacity of human beings Companionship/relationship: Making explicit the various associations among people Human/social activities: Software is designed consciously to support human activities and to address social problems Social inclusion: Software should enable social inclusion enforcing links and trust in communities Thus, SSE can be defined as “the application of processes, methods, and tools to enable community-driven creation, management, deployment, and use of software in online environments”.
After revision: Whereas it is difficult to give an exact definition for the field, the participants of the 1st'' International Workshop on Social Software Engineering and Applications (SoSEA 2008) proposed the following characterization: Community-centered: Software is produced and consumed by and/or for a community rather than focusing on individuals Collaboration/collectiveness: Exploiting the collaborative and collective capacity of human beings Companionship/relationship: Making explicit the various associations among people Human/social activities: Software is designed consciously to support human activities and to address social problems Social inclusion: Software should enable social inclusion enforcing links and trust in communities Thus, SSE can be defined as “the application of processes, methods, and tools to enable community-driven creation, management, deployment, and use of software in online environments”.