Social Networking Web and the New Society

Facebook is no longer the darling of Web 2.0. There are literally dozens and dozens of new social networking web applications, each with up to millons of registered users. Teenagers and even adults spend more time on these sites chatting and messaging friends and strangers, than they do watching television or communicating with family.

What is the impact of this technology on society, and what can we expect from the New Society, and its citizens?

The foundation of any society, as explained by others, is based on trust. This social capital is the foundation where every other institution and social phenonmenon take place. Without trust, there is no society and social interaction. Social networking is the tool that validates trust between users. It reflects the same small town community where everyone is the judge of everyone else. From this foundation, the New Society will have interlocking communities where everyone has been validated by his or her own community, where fraud and deception would be impossible.

That's the rosy optimistic picture. Sadly, on the road there, a more sinister and cynical picture emerges in today's social networking sites, where predators and thieves proliferate, capturing and stealing valuable information based on their unequal knowledge of new technology.

Changing landscape has always produced opportunities for the entrepreneurial to create new wealth by capitalizing on their knowledge. The finite rate of diffusion of knowledge in human society has always been the cause of inequality, and injustice. In this new technology, those who know, can exploit those who don't. Trust is gained from experience, but betrayal can be painful, and the perpetrator can get away with it many times, by betraying large number of people, betraying each person only once. It is the phenomenon of  spammers and crackers translated into Web 2.0. Without a web of trust to safeguard the individuals from these predators, they can profit enough, and move on to their next group of victims.

Fortunately, the interlocking web of trust produced by social networking is a safeguard, but only if the web of deception is revealed and diffused throughout the community faster than the predators can find new targets. The speed of trust propagation and the speed of diffusion of knowledge are the new indicators that define the usefulness of social networking technology.