Special Issue on the Smart, Open and Social Information Systems

摘要

Beginning from informal groups, such as Usenets and Multi-user Dungeons, the first true leap in social information systems occurred with the advent of Internet Relay Chat, Chat Rooms and Electronic Mailing lists. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, Information Systems leaped forward towards becoming more social and informative and Facebook and Twitter became the most popular with the vernacular counterparts in countries such as China. Social information systems are information systems based on social technologies and open collaboration. The essence of social information systems is that they attract a large number of people together in a virtual space and they become social when a user can interact with chosen few without knowledge of others. People can interact with each other and even face to face (as in GTalk and SKYPE) although distant apart. The old community platforms die as the new technologies emerge. The community of people, though, may remain the same. Wherever there is a large gathering, there is possibility of commerce, transactions, announcements,competitions, events, games, sharing, research, teaching and even marriages. Not only these, new business models (or enhancements of already existing business models), such as group buying, also develop in such systems.