With the explosion of tools such as Twitter, the concept of online “presence” has suddenly become much more visible. The design of social experiences needs a model of identity and attention, including presence as a central factor.

This panel will examine presence by looking at the evolving interaction and architectural design elements involved in social design. We'll explore useful examples of existing social tools and look at which of them attend to the concerns of presence well, and why.

In addition, we will touch on more general questions of social design: How do we promote desired behaviors? How does a social tool strike a balance between control and openness, simplicity and richness? When are familiar conventions useful, and when are they not enough? We will invite audience participation as we puzzle through these challenging new issues as a community.

Core IA-related issues:

• Structure of social sites
• Tagging and folksonomies
• Data models for people and their relationships
• Navigation in a community site