Social Computing from a distance
I think we're taking to close a look at social computing to see it for what it really is. Stepping back, it looks a lot like social nets are the next level of internet sophistication.
From this perspective social nets are superimposed upon content nets which in turn rest upon an IP infrastructure. Another analogy -- not without it's problems, but in the right spirit -- might be third generation languages versus assembly.
And that is why it works so well. I suspect that anyone who tells you their online behaviors haven't changed much since their adoption of social computing tools/services, hasn't actually made the leap.
Interestingly, Google reached into this higher order to help manage the content web with their original ranking methodology. I don't think that Myspace, or anything like it, is the Google of the social -- that has yet to be discovered (or perhaps revealed, I'm not telling one way or another -- who'd believe me anyway). And while we're on that subject, who or what, do you think, would be the Cisco of the social? I like this game.