Social Networking: a new web?

The Economist has a special section of this edition devoted to wjat appears to be inexorable rise of social networking sites here.
Elsewhere in the new online journal - Future Net - there are a number of excellent articles. Chief amongst these is the article by Fuchs et al - Theoretical Foundations of the Web: Cognition, Communication, and Co-Operation. Towards an Understanding of Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. As the authors indicate: "What seems obvious is that Web 2.0 is not a technological novelty since the technological basis of these platforms and networks (such as Wikis, Ajax, etc.) have been developed years before terms such as Social Software and Web 2.0 have emerged. This view suggests that these notions refer
to a social novelty. In this paper we want to contribute to the theoretical clarification of notions like Web 2.0 and Social Software by defining the Web as techno-social system."
The article utilises three concepts of sociality: the first two invoke the work of Durkheim and Weber respectively; however in what is a fascinating account they proffer a third account of sociality based on the combining of the insights of Tönnies’ and Marx. These twoa ccountsb of the social: "..have in common the idea that humans work together in order to produce new qualities of society, which can be material or immaterial." See the tables on pages 9 and 10 of the article in this context.