Symbolic Exchange & Facebook

James Dellow is back online - yee-haw! And he's talking about Facebook, building on the comments of JP Rangaswami. I'm going to take apart the title of James's post.

Relationship before Conversation before Transaction

Yes. Maybe. Hang on. No. Relationship through Conversation by Transaction. N.B. A transaction does not have to be financial.

• I can create a relationship with a conversation.
• I can strengthen a relationship with a conversation and/or a transaction.
• I can have a conversation about a transaction and/or a relationship.

Or to put it another way, Facebook's move to open up its API has allowed it (& others) to provide a swarm of social objects to its users. In doing so, it has turned itself into a social eBay more than a LinkedIn or even a MySpace. These objects are trivial (& often annoying) - but they allow exchange in play. And that impacts conversation & relationships.

What does this mean for organisations? How much is your intranet like eBay or Facebook? Are your "assets" (be they stuff or people) in play? Or is everything frozen solid? And is that the way you like it?