Social Killer App
by Sebastian Benthall
The term “killer app” has come to mean any particularly kickass software. But originally, it had a more specific meaning: a killer app was “an application so compelling that someone will buy the hardware or software components necessary to run it.”
Today’s great web apps can no longer be said to run on chips alone. Google’s success as an application depends on the socially built network of links on the internet. Amazon and Ebay rely on user provided ratings and reviews. Wikipedia’s software is relatively simple; only an enduring community of contributors has made it the institution it is today. In each case, the success of the application is intimately tied to the behavior of its substrate of users. This is all commonplace knowledge now, as these were the Founding Fathers of the Web 2.0. What they and social software that has come after them prove is that today’s software applications run on both hardware and socialware. (Socioware? Soc(k)ware?)
Many people today have embraced the idea of using social software for social change. Normally, what they mean by this is that software can help people perform the traditional activities of reform–e.g. discussion, organization, advocacy, publicity. That idea is true and noble and becoming manifest as we speak.
But there is another way in which software can change society. The dependence of people on new technology and social technology on people makes possible the social killer app–an application so compelling that people will adopt the socialware necessary to use it.
This is already happening, of course. My generation has done back flips to meet the socialware demands of Facebook, for example. But there is no normatively backed agenda here; the revolutions necessary for Facebook’s success were accidental effects of a profit motive.
I dream of a piece of software that is both compelling and engineered such that its deployment demands the radical transformation of society for the better. And I don’t think this dream is far fetched or beyond us. At all.
Digifesto 
This is a powerful idea. I have a few questions:
First, about Facebook, what kind of back flips exactly have been done? As Facebook continues to add new members (in some would say a shocking range of ages), will all members be able to do the same back flips, and will they be happy to?
Second, even with the expanding demographic of Facebook, would it be fair to say that the user group is pretty homogeneous in terms of background and values? I mean, presumably you have to have gone to college at some point, or know someone who did, to want to participate?
Now, thinking about the culmlinating idea, the radical transformation of society, it seems to me that such a killer app would need to appeal to people in very different demographics, with different values and different abilities to respond – making it more difficult to conceive of and create something that all of them would and could do backflips for.
And if such a thing were found, such social engineering might not be a great thing, if the engineers happened to be bad, or selfish, or simply short-sighted people.
So, third question: How do we guarantee that that doesn’t happen? Who manages the software developers? Is it time for a new age of philosopher kings?
[…] In my opinion, their design is too centralized and too top-down; but I nevertheless give these folks a tremendous amount of credit, because I believe that a solution to the collaborative deliberation problem they are trying to solve could save the world. It could provide the technological foundation for a Habermasian’ ideal speech situation. If done right–and MIT doesn’t seem far off from a great first step–it would be the social killer app. […]
I’m with skb in comment 1. Can you give a concrete example of adoption of socialware? What’s a backflip we’ve all done to accommodate facebook?
[…] Commenters skb and Matt Cooperrider have asked for an example that justifies my claim in “Social Killer App” that “My generation has done back flips to meet the socialware demands of […]