Social networks have had value long before Facebook or even the internet came to be. Since the beginning humans functioned best and survived by forming communities.

In 1916, L.J. Hanifan used the term Social Capital to define this & explained it to be:

The tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit…. The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself.

If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community.

The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors.^[6]  

Now, with the explosion of internet technologies, the amount of social capital that a person can accumulate has grown exponentially since it is no longer limited by geography & time. Unfortunately, most people don’t know what to do with all of the socialcapital they’ve accumulated. 

Herein lies the problem, social networks & the internet have helped us grow our capacity to keep in touch with others but there aren’t effective tools for a person to put this valuable capital to use to solve various problems, create opportunities, earn rewards, help & build meaningful relationships with others.

This why it is our mission & passion here at tapTank to build social achievement & productivity tools for people to use to solve this problem.

You can sign up to get early access to our tapintoU today at http://www.tapintou.com/!