Sharing Networks: Network dynamics can catalyze community trust faster

A 44-year-old woman in Helsinki, Finland, put it: “[If I designed a sharing service], it would work on network based on recommendations: I know you and you know someone, so you build trust—sort of ‘get introduced.’ Based on trust and community relationships, it’s easier to broaden one’s perspective towards sharing almost anything.”

Many people embrace the notion that sharing networks might complement or replace social institutions that have declined in power and importance. “What I'd want to set up is free sharing of services and stuff amongst a community of people in the way that a small town might once have functioned,” said one 38-year-old woman in Providence, RI. “I think this kind of interaction is part of community ties and support networks that used to develop naturally and spontaneously and need some encouragement now.”

Kim Gaskins of Latitude Research argues this creates “a huge opportunity for businesses to create the technological and community infrastructure that will help people to share in new ways, locally and across much broader distances, than was ever possible before.” And the really interesting thing is that this business activity may actually build social trust.

“There was a day when it would have seemed like a crazy idea to send your goods to people you had never met,” CouchSurfing founder Casey Fenton told us. “But [businesses like eBay] implemented different trust systems and it worked really well. And when you say it like that, people realize we have overcome the trust barrier through the CouchSurfing system. In fact, we are in the businesses of helping people understand just how trustworthy someone they have never met is. It is not our mission, but it is core to why we exist.”

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