Social networking could change world

The tools of "Web 2.0" – the community-driven web – can change the world, a meeting heard this week.

Delegates at the Terra future conference in London were told that social networks can really make a difference and Barack Obama's election campaign believes the notion.

Last year, tech guru Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, defied the Web 2.0 community to give something more productive than the ‘useless’ Facebook applications.

Now, at this week's conference, UK-based social media consultant Chris Thorpe pointed out that just a month after O'Reilly''s call, the Obama election campaign launched the Obama '08 iPhone application.

The application organised and prioritised contacts in key battleground states, "making it easy (for campaigners) to reach out and make an impact quickly", reported New Scientist.

Thorpe told the conference about a number of other networking sites that might satisfy O'Reilly's challenge.

Accesscity, for example, is a social networking site through which a community of Londoners is helping to identify the simplest routes across the city for those with mobility issues – be it pushing a baby buggy to carrying heavy bags.