A post by Scoble led me to a post by Will Davies, which in turn led me to Will’s 2003 report for iSociety entitled “You Don’t Know Me, but… Social Capital & Social Software.” After taking a quick look, I figured that one of my colleagues here at M2M must have already blogged it last year, but I can’t find any sign of it in our archives.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

‘Social Software’ expands on the social capabilities of web browsing and email, but without making false promises about utopian online communities. After the hysteria that surrounded the first decade or so of the web – hysteria which included everything from ‘virtual communities’ living on a ‘cyber frontier’ to a ‘New Economy’ fuelled by ‘dot.com mania’ – the debate has now come full circle to focus in on everyday people in their everyday social lives. In short, new types of software are being developed which are much more adept at helping groups of people organise themselves in their day-to-day lives. The expression ‘Social Software’ only really entered circulation during 2002 to characterise a significant increase in group applications. But by the time of the April 2003 O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in Santa Clara, ‘Social Software’ was becoming the key concept for anyone interested in the social possibilities of the internet. A new and more level-headed optimism has emerged, the fruits of which could render some of the more pessimistic social analyses of the internet redundant.

Only the first chapter is available as HTML, alas—to read the whole thing you have to download a PDF. Which I’ve done, and it’s on my “to read” list for this week.