Internal Intranet systems and websites are now attracting various social interaction services such as blogs, social interaction design, UI design, online community, and social media. Services such as tags and tagging, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, as well as Web 2.0, blogs and social networking are used. Inspirations and insights come from sociology, linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, information sciences, human factors and HCI, interaction design, network relations theory, and psychology, focusing on social practices behind online dating, folksonomies, gaming, networking and more.

Intoweb currently combines the following social media systems into their Social Integration Module:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Last.fm
• Flickr

Facebook

The Facebook API uses a REST-based interface. This means that Facebook method calls are made over the internet by sending HTTP GET or POST requests to our REST server. With the API, we add social context to your application by utilizing profile, friend, photo, and event data.

Facebook Pages expand the social graph by enabling businesses to have a presence on Facebook, giving developers access to more users than ever before. Think of a Facebook Page as something like a Facebook profile, only for entities like a business, a band or artist, or a product or even a brand.

YouTube

Bringing YouTube to your Intranet or website is more than just adding some of the millions of videos available on YouTube. It keeps your visitors interested and allows self-expression and interaction with one of their favorite services. And it brings your site, blog, or page into the YouTube video community-an international network of users, creators, and sites connected through the Web's largest collection of online videos.

You can use the YouTube APIs to let users search YouTube directly from your site, pulling up results which can viewed without having to go to YouTube. Using APIs in combination, you can limit searches by category, tag, or user; and control the number of results returned and whether they're ranked by number of views or the relevance. For example, if you have content on your own YouTube channel, you can build an application that allows users to search only through your own videos, and then watch them without leaving your site.

The YouTube APIs are designed to enable these scenarios. There are two ways you can go about this:

Site-owned videos: Using the YouTube APIs, you can upload all user videos into your YouTube account. In essence, you will own these videos, and your users should be made aware of this. Once the videos are uploaded, you can query and embed them into your site using the YouTube embedded player.

Using the YouTube APIs, you can enable commenting and rating on these videos. Since the comments and ratings will go under your account name on the YouTube site, this implementation makes sense if your community is small and fairly trusted. If that is not the case, you are better off implementing user-owned videos as described below.

Intoweb integrates the YOUTUBE APIs into your Intranet or website.

Last.fm

Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m (US$280m).

Using a music recommendation system known as "Audioscrobbler," Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user's computer or portable music device. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

The free user account includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to post in the Last.fm forums, send and receive private messages and use the Last.fm client music player.

Profile: A Last.fm User can build up a musical profile using any or all of several methods: by listening to their personal music collection on a music player application on a computer or an iPod with an Audioscrobbler plugin, or by listening to the Last.fm internet radio service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded flash player. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar charts and musical recommendations are calculated. They call this automatic track logging scrobbling.

Last.fm automatically generates a profile page for every user which includes basic information such as their user name, avatar, date of registration and total number of tracks played. This can be customised with additional information or photographs if desired but the fundamental layout cannot be changed. There is also a Shoutbox for instant messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks. Each Users' profile has a 'Taste-o-Meter' which gives a rating of how compatible your music taste is.

Profile pages can also include lists of friends, weekly musical "neighbours", favourite tags, groups and events. An optional customisable playlist may be also added, with tracks that the user wishes to share or promote. Other features include the ability to remove songs listened to within a 2 week timeframe, navigation to linked profiles (such as friends and musical neighbours) and a list of individual users' favourite albums.

A customisable display of Recently Played tracks, is now available via web services, allowing users to add them to blogs, MySpace or as forum signatures.

Recommendations: The most recent expanded service on Last.fm is a revamped personal recommendations page known as "The Dashboard". This is only visible to the user concerned and lists suggested new music, events, journal entries and other people with similar tastes, all tailored to the user's own preferences.

Recommendations are calculated using a collaborative filtering algorithm so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profile but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes. The page also lists music that has been directly recommended to the user and groups the user belongs to, journals written by users about artists the user listens to, and other users who have listened to similar music recently. There is also a 'recommendation radio' station which will play music specifically filtered based on the user's last week of listening. Last.fm also permits users to manually recommend specific artists, songs or albums to other users on their friends list or groups they belong to, providing the recommendation in question is included in the Last.fm database.

Groups: Last.fm allows the formation of user groups between users with something in common (for example, fans of an artist, a genre of music, or membership of another internet forum). Groups may be linked to artists and countries. Any user may start a group and add members. Most groups are open to all, but membership may be subject to approval by the Group Leader. Last.fm will generate a group profile similar to the users' profiles, showing an amalgamated set of data and charting the group's overall tastes. Individual groups have their own discussion forums and journal space, and a group radio station based on members music profiles is automatically generated once a sufficient number of members have joined. Group members are also able to submit recommendations of artists or tracks to all the other members of their group.

Events : With the October 2006 update, 'events'-functionality was added, which lets users specify a location and a radius from the location, then suggests gigs or festivals that that user may want to see in the area. Users can set themselves as attending an event.

Any registered user may add a new venue or event which will then be listed on the band or artist's main page, together with other details if available. There is also a facility to submit reviews and photographs of past events.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing website, web services suite and an online community platform. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its organization tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means. It hosts more than two billion images.