Developers' social networks - tools analysis based on the 3Cs model

Abstract

Social networks SNs have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of our social lives and interactions, both personally and at the community level. They affect the way people interact no matter who they are students, instructors, lawyers, programmers, or distributed developers, and no matter where they are co-located or geographically distributed. SNs can be either general purpose social networks GSNs that attract diverse audiences or specific purpose social networks SSNs dedicated to the interests of a group or a small community. This article focuses on a popular type of the specific purpose SNs which are the developers' social networks DSNs. This article defines social networks and developers' social networks. Also, it outlines social networks' evolution, and gives examples of existing social media tools and social networks targeted at developers and software development communities. It compares DSNs to GSNs, and bases its comparison on a new set of common metrics. Finally, it applies the feature-oriented domain analysis FODA and 3Cs collaboration model to classify and analyse the collaborative tools supported in DSNs.