Is Social Currency Really Relevant?

Not yet. But it may be in time. The initial inkling that “social currency” does have some value is in the domain of human resources. For example recruiters like to use LinkedIn to source candidates for job openings. In a less quantifiable way, as people we often check the profiles of people on Twitter, Facebook etc., to see how many “followers” or “friends” they may have. These are habits driven by our naturally competitive nature. This competitive nature has been a core driver in the development of a number of social media services like FourSquare (become Mayor of a place), Empire Avenue with your personal stock trading, earning “eaves” and as the first example of social currency having some form of value – there’s a great blog post here by Caleb Storkey talking with Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble on the potential values of Empire Avenue for business.

But Who Really Cares?
It doesn’t really matter. Unless you’re on LinkedIn or Plaxo, have little or no engagement, no recommendations from former employers or employees and no references from clients; that may cost you a job interview. Beyond that, “social currency” is interesting to sociologists, anthropologists and perhaps marketing researchers and intelligence agencies or police.

Will Social Currency Become Relevant?
A lot of things need to happen first. A lot. Aside from the stars and moon aligning, for any form of “social currency” to have a real economic impact outside Cyburbia, it needs to become like money is – with some form of regulation that defines its value that is accepted by the international community. Which creates the issue of how to value social currency amongst nations and impacts of “trading” actual peoples values. As new social technologies developed, they would have to find some way of being accepted with a process of approval to be added to a “social currency system”. To have real-world impact it means acceptance by society as a whole, between citizens and governments and with anything that scales, will need regulation to some degree.

Is The Internet or “Cyburbia” Relevant Then?
Discussing “social currency” over the weekend lead to the broader, deeper question of the relevance of the Internet/Web as a whole in our lives. The pundits like Scoble, Shirky and  would resoundingly scream yes, while a more sober tone would come from Evgeny Morazov and that sublime mind of Malcolm Gladwell. The Web is completely relevant, it has helped organize democratic protests, birthday parties, weddings and created a new consumer avenue for shopping that is continuing to increase. It is becoming more pervasive and no longer is location or device dependent. Anyway, it is relevant, social currency however, not so much. Yet.

What do you think? Will social currency have an inherent value over time? perhaps it will play out in a different way than traditional currencies or stocks?