The New Kid on the Social Networking Block

This generation can be characterized by many things, but one of the most noteworthy aspects of modern life is the global adoption of social networking. Skimming the headlines of any major newspaper will vouch for this phenomenon. Facebook, now with over 750 million active users, just launched their newest feature—on-site video calling. After a couple of failed attempts, Google comes back with a stronger punch than ever, with the much buzzed-about Google+. MySpace may even make a comeback with the help of renowned pop singer Justin Timberlake. Even sites that don’t populate the media and news headlines as frequently as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are still quite successful in their own right, such as LivingSocial and China’s Weibo. These days, social networking has fundamentally changed the way we learn, work, shop, interact with others and, indeed, they way we go about our lives.

Of the popular social networking sites that offer more than just a platform for connecting with your peers, another hot site that’s rapidly gaining popularity among global users is TermWiki.com, the world’s very first social learning network. TermWiki is the brainchild of a company called CSOFT, which is one of the world’s leading localization service providers.

Never heard of localization? Most haven’t, but companies like CSOFT are behind the success of all products and services, regardless of industry, that are sold abroad. Just over a year ago, the folks at CSOFT came out with a technology to help clients better manage their terminology during the content development and translation process. This technology, which leveraged the ever-growing popularity of wiki-based knowledge management (think Wikipedia), was dubbed TermWiki according to its ability to help control and develop key terms in a highly structured wiki environment.

But when the cloud-based system was up and ready for enterprise-level distribution, the developers realized that in addition to its application in business, the concise nature of the information on the site was perfect for learning about new concepts in an extremely organized and topical fashion. And because of its wiki-based development platform, the system was also conducive to real-time collaboration, which is a cornerstone of effective learning environments. With a few tweaks and broadening of its functionality, what was once a terminology management application was soon reborn as “the new social learning network.”

Upon first hearing this tagline, you might chalk it up to a cheap marketing ploy. Because, let’s face it, learning isn’t sexy. But once you enter the site, it’s evident that the TermWiki team has invested a lot of time and effort to make the site user-friendly, engaging, and functional for a wide range of vastly different individuals, with social networking as the common denominator to many, if not all, of its features.

As a community, the site is based on a large collection of user-generated terms and definitions for virtually all subjects. A collaborative and social approach to knowledge creation and sharing is the heart of the community, because no single person has expert-level knowledge for every subject and language in the world. That, and the checks and balances inherent in community interactions are important to making sure that community members have access to clear, correct, and objective information.

This is what makes TermWiki unique: it works to combine the encyclopedic features of Wikipedia with the networking features of Facebook to create a highly dynamic social learning network. Each user is able to make a profile page where he or she can upload pictures, choose an avatar, display favorite quotes, cultivate a fan base and even build their professional contacts by uploading their CVs. Via these user pages, members of the TermWiki community can also form topic-oriented groups to discuss and promote knowledge sharing in specific fields of interest. At last count, TermWiki was hosting 1,332 topic-based information categories in 82 different languages. This means that to date, members can form up to 110,000 different learning groups based on their specific interests and linguistic backgrounds. And as user contributions to the site’s knowledge base continue to rapidly increase on a day-to-day basis, the possibility of finding peers and experts in a given field to communicate, teach, share, and learn with also increases exponentially.