Social software (SSW), nowadays increasingly widespread, has excellent potential for use as persuasive technology. What differentiates it from many other persuasive technology platforms is that it is inherently collective, making group dynamics a powerful factor in any SSW context of persuasion. Based on the psychology of groups, persuasion, and cross-cultural theory, we discuss affiliation, access, and participation as themes that are important in understanding SSW’s use as a persuasive technology platform.

This paper initially provides examples of how social software can be served as a powerful and persuasive function. Social software and its persuasion triggers are then evaluated under the three themes, affiliation, access and participation. Within these themes, theories within group and individual psychology is evaluated along with social software persuasion mechanisms that assist in motivating users to contribute, participate, conform to group / community beliefs, reflect, self-regulate (reciprocity) and compete against other groups or social software communities. One of the proposed future directions for this research is to measure the persuasion effects of motivation-designed social software against normal social software.

• Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion
• Cross-cultural theory
• User affiliation and access
• Group identity, interaction, motivation and reputation
• Social learning
• Crowd wisdom
• Normative influence
• Social approval
• Inter-group comparison