First, the enthusiasts: following is a video panel discussion among representatives of Second Life, MySpace, FaceBook and LinkedIn (a Commonwealth Club event, via ForaTV). According to them the value of online social networks is immeasurable. No-one blinked when Robin Harper from SecondLife admitted that their power-users average 84 hours a week online, and have absolutely no “First Life”.

And now, the detractors. Since the Kathy Sierra scandal, the Web 2.0 community has started talking about its dark side, albeit hesitantly. Is anonymity really that great? Are we abusing the democratic promise of the Internet by engaging in cowardly flaming wars under pseudonyms? Can you really trust information that is unedited and unattributed? Are people spending too much line creating online personas and online friendships, thereby forgetting how to connect as a real person, face to face?

Andrew Keen is one of the loudest critics of the Web 2.0 mania. In The Cult of the Amateur he writes:

The infinite desire for personal attention is driving the hottest new part of the Internet economy–social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, MTV Flux, and Bebo. As shrines for the cult of self broadcasting, these sites have become tabula rasas of our individual desires and identities. They claim to be all about “social networking” with others, but in reality they exist so that we can advertise ourselves: everything from our favorite books and movies, to photos from our summer vacations, to “testimonials” praising our more winsome qualities or recapping our latest drunken exploits.

The criticisms are mounting. Fast Company warns us not to collect colleagues like Pez dispensers. Even Jurgen Habermas has commented that in the fragmented and decentralized context of the Internet, “contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus”.

It’s important to remember: just because you have 524 online friends (or colleagues) doesn’t mean they really know you or can vouch for you (or would show up with jumper cables if your car stalled at midnight in the rain).