Part V. But Wait...There’s More!

THE WORLD OF SOCIAL MEDIA SOFTWARE IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING. Increases in bandwidth, advances in web technology, the browser becoming the operating system, mobile devices that give users instant online access wherever they are and “social”-enabled Internet of Things devices all provide more opportunities for creating interesting, viral, sticky applications that people can’t live without. In the time we have taken to write this book, hundreds of new sites and applications have launched in the hopes of spreading and growing like Facebook or Twitter.

What we are seeing is an ever-increasing amount of people experimenting and making mashups with different kinds of social features, interwoven into just about any kind of content or service you can imagine. Some of them are amazingly inventive; others are downright weird. With all these different opportunities and rehashes of social features, just where should designers be paying attention?

The breadth of software being developed for consumers today is only half the story. Opportunities lie with mashups, devices, household items, cars, the office environment, as well as open software. Areas that traditionally have been ghettoized or looked down on by user experience designers for not being sexy to work on like enterprise software or in the wheelhouse of the industrial designer are opening up to the interface designer with amazingly interesting problems to solve. These areas provide rich and interesting challenges ...

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