Today ‘Social Networks’ are a way of life. We see it in every possible web based service or application that we use. Sometimes we even wonder if all these ’sociability’ actually serve their purpose in our respective information environments. So is ‘Social Networking’ only a business model for advertising revenue? There is more to the ‘Sociability’ itself rather than numerous discussions around the web about ‘how wonderfully social networks multiply the ‘advertising’ real estate’. Behind the phenomenon of ‘Sociability’ of Information Spaces, there is a very unique psychology at work, termed as ‘Social Translucence’. Socially translucent digital systems make perceptually-based social cues visible to their users. Such systems - by supporting mutual awareness and accountability - make it easier for people to carry on coherent discussions; to observe and imitate others’ actions; to engage in peer pressure; to create, notice, and conform to social conventions; and to engage in other forms of collective interaction.

We use the phrase "social translucence" as a rubric for our approach to designing such systems. "Social," of course, signals our interest in providing cues that are socially salient. "Translucence" has a more nuanced role: Most evidently, in an implicit contrast to "transparence," it indicates that our aim is not to make all socially salient information visible. However, translucence also stands in for the notion that, in the physical world, cues are differentially propagated through space - something which, as social creatures, we understand and make use of, in governing out interactions. Thus, we know that those across the room may see that we are talking, but will be unable to hear what we say; and we adjust our interactions to take advantage of this. - Erickson, Halverson, Kellogg, Laff & Wolf, IBM Watson Research Center. See article for a more complete discussion.

We see these examples everywhere, both for and against our advantage, on various interactive web and information spaces. For example ‘message boards’ are a great way of documenting conversations, and they have important impact on browsing or seeking of information in a socially pervasive way. We may look for an answer to a specific query and find that it has already been answered by someone else. A ’social’ system makes the ‘most read’ or ‘best rated’ answers visible to others. On a ‘translucent’ system, we may look up an answer to a question we never asked, only because we see that "more people are talking about it."  In e-auction ‘places’, you keep picking up more ‘trust’ badges to quote higher. You get an email message with a specific reference, suggesting you should remember the topic well but you can’t. You wish you could look up previous threads. Right then your system pulls up the social graph or timeline to remind you of the last discussion you had with the sender. Translucent systems make large amount of ‘invisible interactions’ visible through high level patterns that people instinctively get queued in. These are a few general observations about how to achieve ‘high translucence’ while designing a socially pervasive information system that makes collaboration easy through social mediation or ‘proxies’-

• Provide a persistent history of asynchronous activity

The general direction should be toward providing common ground, the context necessary for guiding effective collaboration and complex activities. Without support for common ground, collaborators are unable to effectively assess each other’s contributions or develop trust and common goals. One technique for this support is a durable artifact depicting interaction over time, such as conversation trees and threaded discussion boards, which offer the key benefits of a coherent recording mechanism and peripheral awareness of groupwork (Smith et al., 2000).

• Facilitate coherent, near-synchronous communication

Other efforts have focused on improving computer mediated conversation interfaces to more closely match norms of spoken interaction. Te’eni (2001) argues that designers of communication support systems must balance the communication medium and message form, and offers a model for studying the communication process and selecting optimal configuration of medium and message attributes. Te’eni lists several communication strategies that can be augmented by computational solutions: contextualization, control, attention focusing, affectivity, and perspective taking.

• Link the real and virtual worlds

As we look for ways to link virtual and real world events and awareness, notification options provide answers. Users are able to learn something about collaborator actions at a glance. More advanced systems provide interactive maps that use real world metaphors to represent virtual community events. However, challenges are many, considering the need to seamlessly & unobtrusively integrate notification within user’s physical environment. The nuances of ’symbolic mappings’ of activities and ‘presence information’ can significantly leverage the ‘depth and range’ of notification possibilities.