Both Julian Assange and Facebook have implicitly started a mission of cutting information costs. The key of their success is the accuracy of the information they provide. Any breach of trusts in the information they provide will be the end of their success.
Now, why do I think Facebook can actually end? If you take a look on your friends Facebook profiles you will notice that very often they have created a strategic image of themselves, quite different compared to the one you know. That is, they simply add information they know other people might find interesting. Yet, interesting is not always real. One can start with picking up particular pictures that convey joy and happiness in their life, and end up with creating fake people's profile. I know at least one friend of mine that has created a fake profile to start a cause too sensitive to be posted on her profile. She got around 150 friends for that profile in a few days. Anyway form this point onwards she received around 100 happy birthdays from so-called friends, messages on the wall, and so one. So, people responded and instinctively communicate with a non-existent person that they assumed they know. I would not be surprised to find out that there are hundreds, or thousands of Facebook profiles like this. The bottom question is, does Facbook still facilitates trust and trustworthy information among people as it did in the beginning? May answer is no. And I think that in the feature will undermine the website more and more.
Now, let as look at the current headlines character Julina Assange. He has delivered mountains of information to key worldwide news papers, Financial Times, Le Monde, etc. He received the popularity it currently has, mainly by relying on these two vectors of information. Yet, the outcome of the entire story is becoming a telenovela, a cheap TV show where world financial and political community creates a conspiracy to undermine the credibility of Assange. The more the bubble grows the cheaper the content. Trust is again at stake. You look at prestigious newspapers and see that they are dedicating articles after articles, even nominate Assange the man of the year for a "secrets" that virtually any person who discovered internet already knows. You start wondering, whether this is the media that you can further rely on? Are they really making a huge topic out of this? Am I reading the newspaper called Le Monde?
So, the connection between the two is called trust and information accuracy. Once these two issues are gone the existence of these two sources of information not only is NOT reducing information costs anymore but is heavily increasing them.
p.s. Here is a nice joke about WikiLeaks: A new letter has arrived to the kids around world: Dear children, Santa is Mom and Dad. Love, WikiLeaks
