Yeah, I have to admit typing "fabric of trust" made me throw up a little as well. Excuse me.
Questions that I frequently get from friends, and particularly from my parents are "where would you go for X?" or "how do I know I can trust Y?".
The "where" or "Y" may be a real bricks & mortar shop or organisation, or a website, or even software. There's so much scammy and low quality crap out there it's hard to tell what's trustworthy.
Let's take a real world example that most will think is ridiculous
You're oot and aboot and see a Commonwealth Bank branch (for overseas readers Commonwealth Bank is the largest bank in Australia, actually one of the top 10 banks in the world by market cap).
How do you know it's a real Commonwealth Bank branch?
You might look at it's facade. The signage, painting etc all looks high quality and "right" -- the polished, professional exterior, interior, and decor you expect of a bank. The staff are all professionally dressed.
You might expect that if it wasn't a real branch that someone would have noticed. Between the council applications, joe public, and the real Commonwealth Bank surely someone would notice if a fraudster decided to open a fake Commonwealth Bank branch.
At the very least, you should be able to contact the Commonwealth Bank to confirm if this is indeed a real branch location. Which leads to the question - how do you get in touch with the real Commonwealth Bank? Do you consult the White Pages? Why is the White Pages trustworthy?
Maybe you know a little bit about business and you decide to contact ASIC (overseas readers: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission), and find the Commonwealth's Bank registered place of business.
Hang on - how do you know you should trust ASIC?
At some point you reach a root level of trust. Your parents (likely) taught you to trust some level of Government which deems that ASIC is the source of truth on registered businesses in Australia.
What I'm getting at is that the foundations of what we believe to be real or true fundamentally comes down to the people that we know & trust. They form the root of our trust network.
Mum sent me to school and implicitly told me to trust that what the teachers were teaching is the truth. I met others at school and over a long period of time establish trust in a select few and over the years they become my advisors on everything from dentists to restaurants and everything in between.
Facebook Graph Search is about making that simpler, as well as exposing knowledge that may otherwise be hidden.
It makes it possible to discover knowledge that your friends have without having to ask everyone (not that I'm against conversation but there is a practical limit to how many people you can meaningfully converse with).
I'm on the waiting list for the Graph Search beta but I hope that it will offer quick, straightforward answers to questions such as "which dentists do my dentist friends recommend?". This may seem like a stupid question but many of my dentist friends have specialised and no longer practice everyday procedures like checkups & fillings but I know I want to go to the dentists that they go to.
Similarly with bike shops. I want to know which bike shops my cycling friends go to, or shop at [online].
Sure I could ask them one by one but if Graph Seach makes it possible to find out with a few taps on the keyboard that sure saves a lot of time.
The ultimate question of course is the tradies one. Every time we've needed a plumber we go through this ridiculous series of phone calls to find a friend or friend-of-a-friend who has most recently hired a plumber AND found s/he did a good job. It's one of those services we only need every few years and plumbers are often busy, have moved/retired etc.
For me this is the canonical example of the importance of one's trust network. There are umpteen sites online with reviews and ratings but nothing beats a recommendation from someone you trust (or someone they trust).