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In my academic studies with Information Technology I specialized in group technologies. During those days, we had not heard about web 2.0 yet. I did my master’s thesis about groupware support for operational management and kind of forgot it. In my thesis I evaluated groupware features, and how those features would support certain kind of interaction, information transfer and knowledge work.

Then few years after became web 2.0 and suddenly everyone was interested in social software, computer supported cooperative work and groupware. However, there were not (and still are not) that many, who can really specify requirements, plan, implement and manage groupware features. Social web sites are build by trials and mistakes.

Usually you can find awareness information without possibility to synchronous interaction, or chat feature is added without need for such kind of interaction. Knowledge work and collaboration is rarely supported. Organizational memory lies on false structure and becomes unreachable.

At this point, I can only recommend my thesis, which was published by VDM Verlag last month (6/2008). The book, groupware support for operational management, provides tools for requirement specification and groupware feature planning for social web sites. Do not use years trying, when you can easily get the needed information.

Read also: How to Manage a Social News Web-site