Web 2.0 and Social Writing Platforms

We’re kicking the class off with a brief tour of “Web 2.0,” the moniker humans have attached to the slurry of user-driven, microcontent-based sites and applications that began achieving prevalence several years ago. Many parts of Web 2.0 have since become staples of people’s daily routines, as the increasing ubiquity of sites and services like Wikipedia and Facebook have proven. Most of this feels like old hat to the tech-savvy – even if we weren’t consciously ware of the shifting digital climate, we’ve certainly grown familiar with these new technologies and their underlying ethos of accessibility and collaboration.

What I want to focus on in this post is the social writing platform, which strikes me as a little more specialized (and a little less well-known) than other projects under the Web 2.0 banner. The idea behind the social writing platform is intuitive enough and, in practice, it operates a lot like a wiki. Users simply create a password-protected page that houses a blank text document and then invite others to join them via e-mail. From there, anybody in the group can write, edit, or annotate the document as they see fit, with the changes often appearing in real time. It’s a simple idea with boundless applications, as the testimonial page for Google Docs cheerfully attests. From businesspeople and professional writers to family members in disparate locations, people employ the social writing platform whenever they want to easily access, edit, and discuss the same piece of writing.

So how do the various services out there stack up? As per the letter of the assignment, I’m primarily taking a look at Writeboard, Google Docs, and JotSpo – I mean, um, Zoho Writer.

Writeboard

Something about Writeboard makes me think it’s one of the granddaddies of social writing platforms. Its core functionality is solid and well-polished, but it lacks some of the comforting features of its younger, dare I say hipper kin. For starters, though, it’s ridiculously easy to simply get going on a document, no accounts or purchases necessary. (Though, if you’re a Writeboard aficionado with tons of documents on the site, they’ll recommend a Backpack subscription – essentially a tool that organizes all your pages in one location so you don’t have to remember multiple passwords. Handy for businesses, I suppose.)

So what does the site do? Well, like others of its type, it lets you create a password-protected page for your document, e-mail links to your cohorts, and then . . . write. The interface is clean and easy-to-use, and it also includes a revision history that saves and stores past iterations of your document, so there’s little fear of losing a past streak of brilliance after an ill-advised editing session. It also features a handy comparison button that, when used, helpfully highlights all of the changes between two versions of your work. Users can tack on comments to a field at the bottom of the page, which is certainly thoughtful. Lastly, deleted writeboards can be recovered up to two months later, which is Another Neat Thing.

Now, the text field itself is a relatively spartan affair. You can type all you want, of course, but if you want to do any basic formatting (bold text, italics, headers, etc.), you have to resort to Writeboard’s system of clunky, do-it-yourself code. It’s nothing difficult, but given that it’s neither as robust as a word processor nor as convenient as an e-mail or forum post, it can’t help but feel like a chore. And God save you if you have a numbered list.

One thing worth mentioning is that, unlike many of its peers, the editing in Writeboard does not occur in real time. When you elect to change the document, you’re essentially doing it yourself and then resubmitting it back to the main workspace. This might allow for a more deliberative, relaxed pace of writing, but unless carefully monitored, it can also cause a document to branch into two very different versions.

In the end, Writeboard offers nothing fancy, but it’s efficient and gets the job done. It recommends itself most for jobs where formatting is at most a minor concern, like web content. Documents intended for print might be another possibility, as the text is typically exported and formatted in Quark and InDesign. Still, despite its accessibility, it feels like other tools can get the job done better.

Google Docs

Well, it’s Google. It’s a multibillion dollar corporation whose primary service is used by every sentient creature on planet Earth. Of course they put together one of the best social writing platforms out there. They also have a very, um, interesting tutorial that leverages the latest in string and paperclip technology to simulate their rich experience.

Like Writeboard, Google Docs retains all the core features you’d expect from this type of service: create a password-protected document, invite all your buddies, and have at it. Comments and version histories are both included features, but there was no comparison button I could see. On the plus side, the formatting is far easier with Google Docs – you can code it yourself or simply use buttons. Still, truly complex format jobs are best handled by exporting the finished text to a more specialized application.

The changes in Google Docs also occur in real time, which still seems like a mixed bag to me. On the one hand, it becomes far easier to see what everyone else is doing and thereby better coordinate your efforts. On the other hand, it might make for a more frenetic pace of writing. I haven’t tried it myself, but I can’t help but wonder how easy it is to write something while tectonic shifts are occurring higher up in the paragraph. Or worse – what if you engage another writer in combat over the same sentence? Ultimately, though, these grim scenarios are likely unwarranted; any team worthy of the name should be able to work together just fine. And real time does do a lot to streamline the process of constant change, regardless.

Lastly, Google Docs also has spreadsheet capabilities, which makes it an even more versatile option. Writeboard may be a little more accessible, but the barriers to Google Docs are still fairly low – you need a Google account to start making pages, but there are no actual purchases involved. So, in the final accounting, Google Docs seems more useful for a broader array of projects.

Zoho Writer

JotSpot has apparently been swallowed whole by Google, much as a serpent might devour a succulent gazelle. A quick search, however, turned up Zoho Writer, which looks like a solid Web tool from a company known for making solid Web tools.

Zoho Writer is actually just the word processing part of a full suite of applications offered by the company. As a standalone product, though, it is surprisingly robust; it’s nearly as full-featured as Microsoft Word, synchs up with sites like Flickr and YouTube, and allows you to publish directly to the Web. You can also edit a document offline – you know, if you really want to – but its online potential is too much to be ignored.

The catch is that you don’t learn any of this from Zoho’s pathetically bare-bones front page. (I actually culled all of these facts from its Wikipedia entry.)

Besides that, what about the collaborative aspect? As far as I can tell, it operates on the same principles as its brethren: password protect page, send it off to friends, retrieve earlier versions of a document, and so on. Editing occurs in real time. And lastly, the application seems reasonably accessible. You appear to need an account to use it to its fullest potential, but I saw no charges attached.

Long-winded analysis aside, what’s the most useful platform? The only one that seems clearly out of consideration is Writeboard. Solid it may be, but compared to the others it seems obstinate and archaic. Google Docs is versatile and well-suited for many purposes, but it seems it can’t trump Zoho for writing web content; its synchronization abilities provide it with a winning edge.

~ by pbonaduce on January 29, 2008.