I agree with the general sense of hope that you feel that is reflected on a larger scale by Obama’s success or the rise of Change.org. While I don’t necessarily agree that it signals the “death of top down leadership,” I do believe it signals the birth of “campaign 2.0″ as a viable alternative to traditional campaigning.

I also agree with your sense of skepticism with respect to whether social media and the increased connectivity facilitated by the WWW will, ultimately, make a real difference in society – one that benefits the common good, as I interpret your piece. When efforts in social media that are directed toward the common good seem to be as fleet as a Tweet that gets buried beneath the “banalities” you refer to, it is easy to feel as if it’s all a big game for the participants – jockeying for “social position,” so to speak, with “I have more facebook friends” or “i have more photo albums showing how much fun I have at the bars” being the signs of great accomplishments in this world.

But I think one place where we diverge is with respect to the notion that the efforts that are directed toward the common good are “too little too late.” Whether someone wants to show off their night at the bar with photos, Tweet their way to freedom from an Egyptian jail cell, or wax intellectual on a friend’s blog comments (!!??), the fact that we have the choice to engage in banalities or take part in social movements, on top of the choice of whether to do so with others or alone, is what really counts.

Those who emerge as networked leaders are those who look past the irrational exuberance of the social graph and realize that for every “line” connecting one person to another, that same line is a reminder of the real space between us when it comes to socializing on the web. How real can our relationships be if we continually rely on computers to validate, or in the parlance of FB “confirm,” their meaning/role in our lives? Networked leaders, such as Obama, realize that a campaign, ironically a word that comes from the military lexicon, is required if real benefit to the common good is to be made through the movement of populations. Networked leaders are not content to have more friends, wall posts, or photo albums then the people they are connected to – they are most content when they are “fighting” to bridge the connection between one side of the social graph to the other. They accept and embrace the choice of those who would rather “bowl alone,” and they are exceptional in their ability to overcome the urge to do so with their own lives on the web for the sake of spurring real outcomes from their activities in world of electronic symbols on a computer screen.

Once again, great piece here, Jeff. Kudos for calling attention to an oft-overlooked issue such as this one.