Life-long learning is a key issue for our knowledge society. With social software systems new heterogeneous kinds of technology enhanced informal learning are now available to the life-long learner. Learners outside of learning institutions now have access to powerful social communities of experts and peers who are together forging a new web 2.0. This paper reviews current work in pan-European initiatives that impact upon life-long learning via views of professional learning, learner competence and social networking. It seeks to provide an overview of some of the critical research questions for the interdisciplinary field of social software research.

Interestingly, a user contribution measurement model (which the authors have termed as an incentive mechanism) for a specific forum platform is presented in this paper. This model evaluates 5 user contribution related factors which include; (1) forum postings (20 points each), (2) replies to posts (10 points each), (3) post ratings (3 points each), (4) replies to their posts (5 points each) and, (5) post votes received (3 points * rating value, where rating value = 1-5). This model is quite similar to the model developed from my Honours project. Initially, my team had identified 53 user contribution related factors but we decided to only include 16 factors in the model as they were common factors that were easy to evaluate with current and popular forum platforms. This allowed for our model to be more portable to different forum platforms. Additionally, the authors of this paper observed that there was a significant increase of both active and passive participation after introducing their incentive mechanism.

• Differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
• Learning network for learning design (LN4LD)
• iCamp - http://www.icamp-project.org/
• Ghost blogging
• TENCompetence Project
• Social exchange theory
• Actor-network theory
• Automated Meta Data Generation Framework
• MACE Project - http://www.mace-project.eu
• PROLEARN http://www.prolearn-project.org
• WINDS project
• ALE system
• RAFT project
• Knowledge manifold (KM)
• Concept browser
• Conzilla - http://www.conzilla.org
• Confolio - http://www.confolio.org