Carson Workshops held a summit on the future of web apps back in September of 2006. There where some interesting talks, but by far my favorite was given by Tom Coates of Yahoo. He had some insightful generalities that he believes about social software and what makes it valuable. It’s definitely worth a listen. One of the observations he makes is this:

How you can use social software to build aggregate value… in a nutshell:

• An individual should get value from their contribution
• These contributions should provide value to their peers as well
• The organization that hosts the service should derive aggregate value and be able to expose that back to the users.

Thats just one component of the talk – theres a good deal more packed in to the thirty-eight minutes and forty-two seconds. You can get it from the future of web apps site.