SlideShare (www.slideshare.net) is considered to be the world’s largest community for sharing presentations on the web. The initial project brief outlined the project as a social system design.

I started by analysing other sites to understand how social networking works on these sites. I framed a social networking model for SlideShare, enumerating the various aspects to be developed. I came up with the design of the SlideCast Viewing Player. Next, I designed the basic structured architecture and experience of the Contacts (relationships) and Messaging (conversations) features. The My Slidespace (identity) aspect reconceptualised the concept of profile page to a start-up cum personal space cum profile, and also coded the HTML and implemented the Modular CSS approach to My Slidespace page. 101 Ways to SlideShare (reputation) highlighted the most creative slideshows on SlideShare and their creators. This functionality was designed and implemented (HTML +CSS) by me. In the end, the Homepage was redesigned.

The project ‘Social Networking on SlideShare’ laid the foundation of sociability on SlideShare and helped it change from a place for people to upload slides to a place for people to connect over slides. The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) ranked SlideShare Number 26 along with FaceBook, Wikipedia and Ning, as the Top 100 tools for learning professionals in the world.

I discovered much about the current social web, the future of networking, sharing and communication and agile methods of development. Designing under constraints and for an emerging architecture was great learning.