Brian Ma's Blog (@zealoustiger)

The web has always been social, from the days of its first invention to relay information to today, but what’s really powered the social web isn’t quicker and more convenient tools like IM, Facebook, and Tweets, but faces.  Faces, seemingly trivial, are the fuel to explosive user engagement – why?  Because you only get faces (users only upload their pics) when they genuinely trust your site and when other people see that they’re on a site that other people trust, they also put up their pictures.  It’s a network effect at it’s best.

Take a really simple example.  Look at my news feed on facebook:

Now compare that to my feed on LinkedIn:

Dramatic difference isn’t it?

Face to face communication has always been the bread and butter of human interactions and with online social media becoming what it is today, it’s coming one step closer to imitating the ‘real world’.  Will technology ever replace f2f communication?  Most likely yes.  Who knows what kind of magic we can invent a decade from now… holograms anyone?  :)