Technology

R&D centre launched for social software

By Amelia Kwok | 18 September 2008

IBM has launched a centre for social software, which will bring together the top talent at the company who will work with university students and faculty, clients and partners, for the research, development and testing of social software.

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The social software centre is an example of ‘Tomorrow at Work’, an IBM initiative that examines a changing work world and anticipates trends in technology, business, society and culture.

The ability to form and interact within a community is becoming increasingly important as internet-based technologies make their way into corporate environments and companies seek to collaborate more with their customers, partners and employees.

The goal of the centre is to create a new type of collaborative environment to tackle some of the toughest questions about social software, identify new business models, help discover next-generation Web 2.0 applications, and determine how and why people form viral communities and the implications they have on our daily lives.

IBM intends to collaborate with members of the academic, scientific and biotechnology communities around the world. The company will also share findings of the research with local universities and the IT community on the use of social software systems.

The goals of the facility are to:
• Explore, innovate and commercialise best practices in social networking.
• Work with forward-thinking businesses to pilot and customise enterprise social networks unique to their industry profile.
• Create jointly funded research collaborations with government, academia, industry and venture capital participation.
• Design the future of IBM’s Web 2.0 collaboration portfolio, including social discovery, social search and new scalable architectures for social software including cloud computing.
• Further social software governance: formal policies encouraging or constraining the uses of social networking in organisations.
• Develop the science of social software: quantifying social networking.
• Explore cultural differences in the use of social software.

“The new centre is a channel for the social computing community and our customers to collaborate on the most innovative social technologies being developed today,” said Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Director of the IBM Centre for Social Software. “We view the centre as a magnet for the top social computing scientists around the world to visit, share work and innovate.”

Researchers from IBM’s Research labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York, San Jose, Haifa, Israel, Tokyo, and Beijing, as well as experts from across IBM may participate in a special visiting scientist program, enabling IBM employees from across the globe to rotate into the centre to work on specific projects.

Located in the heart of Cambridge’s technology and biotech neighborhood, the IBM Centre for Social Software reinforces IBM’s growth plans in Massachusetts.