Does the new Web mean new interfaces?

I just finished reading The New Wisdom of the Web: Newsweek article April 3, 2006

This article talks about a change in new start-up Internet company creations. Touted as the next stage of the Internet - Web 2.0. The difference is that the new Web companies invite the user to participate in the content creation and organization. Examples include MySpace, the prime hangout for 65 million young people. Or Flickr, a 2.5 million member community built around sharing photos - an infinite scrapbook.

These new community based Internet ventures are the next big tech boom, called the live Web. What makes the Web alive is our participation by creating content and sharing it with other users through communities such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Del.cio.us and MySpace. By doing so we are creating and using collective intelligence. Users are creating the content, sharing content, monitoring, editing and organizing content as a group.

So how is this happening? A new set of technologies created by programmers are providing the connective tissue to the mass network. Technologies such as tagging, RSS, Ajax and mash-ups. Tagging is a way to mark and organize around categories, for instance Flickr has a tag “squared circle” where photographers look for such patterns in their environment and take photos to post under the tagged category. RSS lets you subscribe to specific information the way you subscribe to a magazine. Ajax provides Web-based applications that act like programs on your computer. Mash-ups take live information streams from multiple sites and blend them together. We also are being exposed to new terms, such as “social computing” or “social media”. A term that means Web sites are built to benefit from connections between participants.

So how does “social computing” or “social media” affect interface design?

Social media is like being a member of a large family. Except it is a family, that I as a user choose to join. So one aspect of interface design for such media has to have the feeling of inclusion. Let’s say I have a subject to research either for pleasure or for work purposes. The first stop might be Wikipedia. This online version of the Encyclopedia has a big difference in structure and function. It can be added to and edited by the user instead of some authority in the publishing field being responsible for all of the content. The knowledge space for me needs to have a simple format that is easy to scan and provides context aware links that lead me to more information if I need it. It is organized by hierarchy in some places, into portals that branch off into sub portals. But it also lets me jump from one thought to another ore fluidly. It not only has a way for me to add to current information but invites me to do so. From function to visual, the feeling of this site is one of inclusion, ie the Wikipedia “Commons” a meeting place where all may participate. The navigation strategy allows for different styles of navigation. There are menu type link labels as well as embedded links in the content. The two structures allow for me to either be very exploratory in or very deliberate in gathering information. These interface design structures are just a few examples of making a user feel welcome.

How do you think “social computing” affects interface design?