There is one view that CMS apps and community apps are the same thing. They both deal with content and they both have users. There are a large number of people who I work with who tar both types of systems with the same brush.
Finally while in a meeting with Jim telling me what DNA is it clicked.
I can finally do a taxonomical classification based on physiological differences. I know the primary recognizable difference. It’s as obvious as vertebrates vs. invertebrates, you just need to look at the skeleton; the data structures.
The primary data element for social software is the user. The thing that everything else in the database will eventually relates to is the user. It’s the primary data element.
For a CMS the primary data element is a content item. It will then have metadata that relates to users and other data types, but the content item is the primary data element.
Simple yet powerful. There are a number of ways that this makes a difference, interaction design and basic database design being the two most obvious.
I’m just not sure yet whether a CMS or social software is the invertebrate.
February 16th, 2004 at 3:43 am
I don’t think it’s that simple. For a start, most CMSes don’t start off with a concept of user (at least, not beyond edit-side authentication), whereas most community systems *do* have a concept of content, even if it’s little atoms like forum posts or game objects. In my experience, community systems tend towards a CMS direction faster than the other way around.
I do like the idea of working out the bias you describe by looking at a schema, but it’s often not that simple. Certainly, with systems like DNA, Scoop and Slash you’d be very hard-pushed to find a definitive bias one way or the other. In fact, those cases show that the very idea of differentiation is outmoded. DNA was designed from the start to be both: a community focused around content-creation. Both the content and community sides have done some serious evolution since then.
February 16th, 2004 at 9:12 am
No I dont think it’s that simple either
But I didnt have the time to write a essay with all the counter arguements.
I think you also just said it nicely in the fact that CMSs dont start off with the concept of the user, and users are related to content. Whereas social-software starts off intrinsically with that. Then the users are related to each other via content, in the case of content focused apps like messageboards, or more directly to each other via social networking apps like friendster.
By the time either type of system is fully formed there are no doubt lots of similarities in the data. Perhaps it’s more like parallel evolution rather than divergent.
I would be interested in seeing the DB schemas for slash or scoop and see what they look like.
February 24th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
I don’t think that a clear understanding of a community system is at all near.
Communities often (not always ) have a membership, some with lists and fees etc, some your just a member by being in the area.
Most are simple to understand and really rely on their members providing a service.
Once you go beyond that you can use system to provide lists and have news etc, still the issue is communciations.
In our community we use excel to manage the membership lists, we will move to another system soon because we want to share and have this list accessible to all of the active rather than passive members.
We are looking at two products the favorite at the moment is Activity Forum if it works for us. We will see, however it does have a CMS in built as a news and events diary and its simple (or so it seems).
Have a look at it
Regards
John