The social web is a term that can be used to describe a subset of interactions that are highly social, conversational and participatory. Examples include Twitter, Facebook, and Jaiku.

Perhaps the best analogy for the Social Web is the worldwide banking and credit card system. This infrastructure has evolved over centuries to facilitate the global exchange of a very sensitive form of data — money — by establishing a common means of exchange among trusted third party service providers — banks. The Social Web takes the same approach for exchange of private, sensitive information by establishing a common means of exchange among trusted third party service providers — i-brokers.

The features of social web applications include:

• Expressing and developing identity
• Relationships
• Trust
• User-driven and generated sites and content