Carlos:

Great comments. I have been to HoffSpace BTW - there are some things you can never un-see and I will require therapeutic counseling for a long time. ;-) However unappealing HoffSpace may be to you and me, it is a "conversation" that probably creates new business transactions. Sure - it seems like worthless droning about a nut-job actor, but the fact that you know about it, is yet additional evidence that social computing is effective.

In contrast, Linkedin is not really a social media site - sure we refer to it as a social network, but the degree of user generated content is very limited. Twitter (a flow application) embraces conversations far better than Linkedin. I've used Linkedin for 5 years - not a single new business deal has ever emerged from that effort. Using Twitter for 8 months, I can point to three deals as a direct result.

While it's easy (at an academic level) to debate the value of online social connectivity, the point of this post is to discuss the value of conversations that lead to business. There is certainly a possibility that your outrageous hypothesis is true, just as the outrageous valuations for systems such as FaceBook suggest there is ample evidence that Cluetrain was right.

Setting aside the possibility that the planet is becoming increasingly ignorant (or maintaining a constant level of ignorance), whether affected or disaffected by social media, aren't conversations emerging as a primary means for determining how to spend income?

-- bf

Mmmm, let's see... :)

The Manifesto says, in typical hyper-optimistic 2.0 fashion, that "markets are getting smarter", and you suggest that 10 years later 'the proof is in the pudding', so to say. Let me temper such optimistic outlook with a slightly more skeptical view:

• Markets don't get smarter with improved networks: they get more efficient (See "unleashing the killer app"), and that is not necessarily a reason to cheer (Witness the very efficient money-lending market set-up by the last two republican administrations)
• As Shirky warns us in "Here comes everybody", demolishing publishing and aggregation costs makes possible networks that before could not compete with Coases "the firm", and that includes ALL types of networks. That means Boston's pioneering group against Catholic Church priests' abuses (which transaction costs prevented before from happening) on the good side, but it also includes David Hasselhoff's Social Site, Hoffspace, the most inane and moronic aggregate of content to ever meet the Internet.
• With so much time spent socializing, is anybody still doing antiquated things like, say, deep thinking or working?Have you ever sat at a conference next to somebody tweeting, and tried to guess what that person's average attention span time is?

So, let's keep the possibility open for the outrageous hypothesis that social media may be just another circular cause and effect of the fact that the total planet intelligence is a constant (and the population keeps growing): newer generations need to socialize more SO THAT they don't have to think more.