There are many faces or aspects to what we call social networking. It’s a wide spectrum that spans the banal to the inspired. It is also heavily weighted at one end – the end where topics, comments and updates live in the banal and for this it can at times be maligned and easily dismissed. But people are using social networking for more then just posting glib remarks, tweeting about lunch or playing Farmville – they are also using it to organise in new, powerful and effective ways.

Take for instance the carpooling business Zimride – it has used the power of social networks, primarily Facebook, to create an effective carpooling system that empowers people to both save on transport costs and help work towards an sustainable future. I encourage you to watch the Current TV segment on about this company which I have embedded below:

Particularly of interest for me is how this type of social networking – this type of social organisation is providing yet another disruptive volley in the war between the traditional business models and the hyper-networked always connected models of online.

Businesses like Zimride should be an early warning sign that the online world has only just started when it comes to the disruption it brings to the old ways of doing things. When we see even public transport being influenced and redefined via these social networking paradigms it begs the question what can’t be affected by these rising trends.

That said, like we have seen before with incumbent industries like the music business – traditional institutions won’t just sit still either as there way of doing business is threatened – before social networking even existed as we know it today – back in 2005 a French bus company sued a carpooling group of cleaning ladies claiming that they were stealing their customers. As Clay Shirky has said:

“One of the first things that happens when you institutionalize a problem is that the first goal of the institution immediately shifts from whatever the nominal goal was to self preservation”

So the bus company is only interested is solving the movement of people via buses not actually solving the problem of mass transit. The music industry is interested in selling music not letting people experience artists. You get my point.

Now at this stage there are only 300,000 users of Zimride and mainly college and university students, buts lets not forget that Facebook itself is an alumni of these institutions and just like Facebook they have already started moving beyond their roots to include corporate businesses and even events.

The Zimride idea is simple, people friendly and approachable, so I can easily see it scaling beyond its modest efforts in providing students with that ‘cheap ride’ – this can work anywhere and with over 350+ million people now on Facebook – why not every city, every town, every village. Tell me then that this sort of scale doesn’t put chills down the spines of all those bus company executives out there or can’t create an effective alternative choice to the standard public transport network.