Social Objects - Jyri Engestrom

While the concept has been floating around in the mainstream for several years now, I just recently came across Google’s Jyri Engestrom‘s notion of a Social Object. For an introduction to the notion of a Social Object, please see Hugh MacLeod‘s Social Objects for Beginners.

Engestrom has given a number of presentations on the topic of Social Objects over the years. The presentation below is from Web2.0 Expo San Francisco in April 2009.

Here’s the slide presentation on Slideshare.

And here are Engestrom’s 5 Principles for Building Object-centered Social Sites:

1. Define your object
2. Define your verbs
3. Make the objects shareable
4. Turn invitations into gifts
5. Charge the publishers not the spectators

The “social object” concept is very powerful. It’s somewhat obvious after you encounter it, but it’s nice to put a label to the concept.

glenn

About these ads