E-Social Capital

I feel like I've been relating a lot of what we're talking about to the internet. Well, specifically I talked about the evolution from the printed press to press on the internet. Keeping in the same light, I decided to read an article entitled "Bowling Alone, Online Together" by David Hill, published in Information, Communication and Society. With the article Hill sites the differences between communities, proximal communities, and e-communities; the first being communities we just happen to end up in (like neighborhoods) the second being in-person communities we choose to join, and the third being on the internet. What was interesting was that a lot of similar values applied to all the groups, it's just they way they were monitored that changed. There were ways to build trust, reputation, and finding common ground. One thing that I found interesting about the article was the lack of focus on websites for civic engagement. While ebay and geocaching.com both make a community, I wonder whether they contribute the same degree of social capital like E the people, the one political website the article mentioned, It forms a society of trust, but does it engage people like the voluntary organizations of the past did? I would think not, but the intertubes are growing at an exponential rate.