The online banking I do is typically not social, though a la Wesabe, we see some interesting applications of group data. - Brian Oberkirch

porn and banking.are the first things that came to my head. - chartreuse

I hear porn, banking, healthcare, but that even these are becoming social in some ways. @bokardo says "social" may be a 2nd order motivation. So does the user's intention matter? - Brynn M Evans

wesabe:social banking::google:social search! PornTube:porn videos::YouTube:trampoline videos. - Chris Messina

its not the 'social' word thats wrong, its that its not being applied to words other than media. my thoughts: http://is.gd/PsX - Jeremy Toeman

Wesabe makes banking somewhat social. If you could BabyCenter as healthcare it's social. Porn is totally social (AdultFriendFinder) - Clay Newton

I can't really think of things that aren't social, more like a lot of poorly implemented "social things". - Clay Newton

Clay: are you saying everything you do online is (or should be) social? - Brynn M Evans

Chris: you know how I feel about Google as a social search site...Unless you're supporting Clay's notion that these all those categories are poorly implemented "social things" - Brynn M Evans

Jeremy: True, "social" is a nebulous term, but I was thinking more about listing non-social actions people do online (whether or not through "social media"). - Brynn M Evans

@Brynn: I was mostly being facetious because I know how you feel! ;) Wesabe benefits from people sharing, so it feels social, but I wouldn't say that it IS social. Definitions again...! - Chris Messina

I'm trying to figure out what I do that doesn't have some "social" component and it's just varying degrees of suck. - Clay Newton

@chris Wesabe has the whole "Groups" thing and the "Goals" thing... they aren't directly social finance thangs, but they are social components. I was thinking Zopa and Prosper count as two "social" finance services, then there's a whole host of online trading social utils. - Clay Newton

I could accept that there is a range of "social" online. BUT: do we treat those different social activities differently? Like, do we design technology to support the range of "social" differently? As a researcher, is it important to study the different classes of "social" individually, or lump them together? - Brynn M Evans

I think the critical thing is that "social" is a series of features applied to an application or utility, and the social aspects that are managed are specific to the type of utility, the implementation and the zeitgeist. - Clay Newton

It's funny that so many people are willing to talk about a "range" of social and read social aspects into all of our activities. If we say that Google is social and that online banking is social because somehow they involve input from other people, then why shouldn't I call my own personal thoughts social (utilize language, a social convention - often involve a component of internal dialogue). - Sanjay