With the dawn of 3rd millennium we observed the emergence of a new phenomenon, a computing paradigm that introduced a myriad of applications aiming to meet the needs of the wider society. Significant observances in these applications were their unique ability to evolve over time gaining rapid growth and massive user communities disrupting traditional societal and business practices which made Social Computing stand apart from all other preceding computing paradigms.

    Contemporary advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have avidly facilitated the emergence of this new computing paradigm. We’ve identified enabling technologies of this computing paradigm primarily as ubiquitous broadband connectivity either mobile or Wi-Fi, frontend devices with sensors such powerful personal computers, tabs, iPads and specifically smart phones. The other enablers are, backend cloud computing and growth of the Web from 1.0 which was for one-way communication that wasn’t providing interactive content to 2.0 which support effective two-way rich multimedia communication.

    Social Computing has changed how we find accommodation like Airbnb, how we book a taxi like Uber, or how we reference a book with access over ownership by accessing only the necessary chapter for a required period of time on Amazon.

    We have begun to socially interact with peers and loved ones across the globe for free using social networking sites like Facebook or share user generated content with a global audience on YouTube.

    The successful applications possess exponential growth curves and exceptionally large community sizes. Facebook initiated in 2004 has a community of 2.3 billion users today, YouTube 1.5 billion users and Airbnb 200 million users. These applications have demonstrated new disruptive approaches to enhance triple bottom line of businesses, whether financially, social corporate responsibly or environmentally. For example, an application like Airbnb cause extra income for a host, YouTube cause empowerment through user generated content shared to an international audience for free, Uber cut down fuel consumption by ride sharing.

    In fact Social Computing has not only caused emergence of new disruptive peer to peer sharing business models as mentioned above but also has impacted existing eBusinesses. Many traditional brick and mortar businesses successfully embraced eBusiness models in the pre and early millennium. Unique example from our own backyard is Australia’s almost two centuries old iconic department store David Jones Ltd. which embraced eBusiness in 2003 and furthered their web presence by successfully morphing into implementing Social Computing in 2013 after several previous attempts. They launched their catalogue on a custom built web and mobile friendly interactive Social Computing application. Concurrently they made their customers feel their active presence in popular Social Computing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. They also installed digital mirrors which they termed ‘omni mirrors’ within their landmark stores which automatically posted customer photos to customers’ social profiles. David Jones store ambassadors, iconic designers and models made engaging appearances online their application through live chats, webinars. David Jones admins carried out an online discussion with the users on their application about their new products, free invitations to their launch events, how the product is used thus engaging their customers and potential future customers. As a result within the very first quarter since implementation of Social Computing they claimed in their ASX (the Australian Stock Exchange) report that by doing so they gained 711% sales increase.

    This is simply the tip of the ice burg of digital value creation occurring on Social Computing platforms. We at the AeIMS lab: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=A5hYIEEAAAAJ 

of Western Sydney University are involved in ongoing research as to what this phenomenon is and as to why it had been able to cause a greater digital value creation than any other computing paradigm. We also share these state of the art findings through a core unit “Social Computing 300961”. Thus we invite you to join in our discussions and share value.