important thing to establish. Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles (see illustration) is not a social-network or -networking site, but the architecture is worth examining. Patagonia is a company that has always been committed to sustainability. Its Footprint Chronicles project is an attempt to make that commitment more visible to its consumers. What is striking about the architecture of this site is that Patagonia has arranged some life-cycle-assessment data (raw materials, manufacture, assembly, distribution) geospatially. Facebook has a geospatial application called “Where I’ve Been,” but like the social-causes applications mentioned earlier, it exists on the periphery. On the Patagonia site, the geospatial architecture is central. Click on a wool crew shirt and we are taken to a sheep farm in New Zealand. Flip through a slide show there and we travel to a textile mill in Japan, where another slide show awaits. In some instances, we even get to watch a video.

But what keeps this site from being a social networking site is that the communication is one way. We never actually get to speak to the sheep farmer or the textile worker. So the architecture here is conflicted. The slideshows and videos presented are one-way communications “written” by Patagonia. Nonetheless, through the geospatial arrangement of data and narrative, we begin to understand that it takes a global community to bring us our products. But if Patagonia were to replace the video of the sheep farmer with something like a Facebook profile, it would have a pretty impressive network-

ing tool, one truly devoted to improving human relationships on a grand scale.

around projects by providing features such as Facebook-ish profiles, animated data, and project management tools.

Sense of Accomplishment

A third feature that is important in facilitating trust and collaboration among online groups is one that establishes for the users a sense of collective accomplishment. The architecture of the Nike+ social networking site (see illustration) is focused around an activity— running—and requires the users to own and use two common products: Nike+ shoes and an iPod. While the individual is running, the shoes generate data that communicates with the iPod, which in turn communicates with the user about her run. When the user gets home, she docks the iPod, which uploads data to a Nike+ social networking site. The data is the reward; rather than being monetary, that reward is an ever-growing picture of how many miles she has run, and she can compare her data with that of other runners around the world. The animation of the data allows members of the Nike+ community to see the benefits of their combined efforts grow in real time. And, of course, the site also happens to market shoes for Nike.

This animated data feature shows up in noncommercial applications as well. Kluster, a social networking tool that debuted at the TED conference this past winter, is organized not around celebrating individuals or communities but around accomplishing tasks. The knowledge architecture of Kluster motivates diverse groups of people to gather

Putting It Together

If the features above were infused into an existing online network, that network would be far more efficient than our current models in facilitating trust and collaboration among dispersed groups of producers and consumers. Worldstock is an online market that is attached to the well-known e-commerce site Overstock.com. It was created to fight poverty in the poorest regions of the world by connecting global artisans with global consumers in a virtual marketplace. But the “ shopping-centered” architecture at Worldstock is not that much different from e-commerce sites that carry mega-brands. Of course, the shopping-centered model makes some sense— ultimately, we do want to put consumer dollars into the pockets of global artisans. But with a heightened architecture, the entire experience could be much richer on a social, environmental, and economic level.

If Worldstock producers and consumers had something similar to Facebook profiles, they could share their identities with one another and establish synchronous communication and friendships. Through our profiles we can share tacit knowledge with images, stories, videos, and music to identify the things we have in common and to share the cultural experiences that make us unique. This architectural feature would enable Worldstock consumers to understand the people behind

[ 6] danah boyd and Nicole Ellison. "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (October 2007).