How social networking might change the world

Can social networks change the world? Yes, they can, in the words of Barack Obama's election campaign. That campaign itself provided evidence that the tools of "Web 2.0" - the community-driven web - can really make a difference, delegates at the Terra future conference in London heard this week.

Last September, tech guru Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, challenged the Web 2.0 community to come up with something more productive than time-wasting Facebook applications - singling out "Superpoke", which invites users to interact with their friends by throwing imaginary sheep at each other (among other things), for particular derision.

At this week's conference, UK-based social media consultant Chris Thorpe pointed out that just a month after O'Reilly's clarion call, the Obama election campaign launched the Obama '08 iPhone application. The application organised and prioritised contacts in key battleground states, "making it easy [for campaigners] to reach out and make an impact quickly".

The application also showed how the user's call statistics compared with the national average. As CNET said: "Those statistics are the kind that can motivate people - they can feel like they're part of something bigger."

Thorpe told the conference about a number of other networking sites that might satisfy O'Reilly's challenge. Accesscity, for example, is a social networking site through which a community of Londoners is helping to identify the simplest routes across the city for those with mobility issues - be it pushing a baby buggy to carrying heavy bags.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16681-innovation-how-social-networking-might-change-the-world.html
By : Vilency / xi ipa 2