In his 2009 TED talk Jonathan Zittrain spoke about the nature of the web, claiming that the Internet relies on random acts of kindness by “geeky strangers.” Ours is an online culture and economy increasingly fueled by two things: reciprocity—think friends, followers, lists, reviews, recommendations, comments, open-source and crowd-sourcing, P2P help forums. And second, shareability—on socnet walls and profiles, via curation in the clouds, tweeting, playlisting, favoriting, youtubing, and torrenting the media we value, distributing it to our social graphs.

When people are nice, when we share, encourage and promote each other, act generous, give compliments, pay it forward, we all win. This is especially true in our increasingly networked e-society. Today the online reputation of an individual or a brand is linked closely with how they are received according to factors of influence, competence, and relevance—on and offline.

Beyond earning yourself (or your product or organization) a good rep, there are many other reasons to be nice, including the connections between fostering happiness and enabling productivity, creativity, inspiration, and motivation in those around you. Happy friends, employees, clients, kids and spouses are likely to be healthier and make better decisions too. Long before Coke and Pepsi launched campaigns based on optimism and joy, FastCompany explained that the most successful brands are in the business of helping their clients in the pursuit of happiness.

socially-networked niceties and e-complimentarity

We all know that a few well-delivered and carefully-timed compliments can open doors (a lot faster than being clever, cynical or critical), but what if you are the type of person who struggles to come up with a nice thing to say? For the truly desperate, yessir, there’s an app for that. The one-million-compliments app or the compliments confidence booster app (both for iPhone) will instantly produce something nice and fresh for you to say, to give you lips like sugar even when you are in the most tongue-tied, uninspired, or foul mood. However, if you never feel in the mood to give a compliment, either you are a permagrouch, chronically self-absorbed, or maybe it’s just way past time to assess the health of your relationships (at work and at home). Just sayin’.

Silly apps aside, authentic and honest praise for a job well done, communicated clearly, perhaps with a dose of appreciation or and gratitude, tends to have a boomerang effect. Niceness comes right backatcha. This is especially true (and sometimes amazingly rapid) within online social networks. People notice our graciousness and our not-so-nice and uncool behavior on the web, and they respond, sometimes in real time. Case in point: of the top ways to rapidly lose Twitter followers, insulting someone or someone’s city rates far higher (in fact it is number one) than swearing or being spammy. Interesting! Potty mouths and pushy promoters are tolerated more easily than Tweeters who cannot be nice.

The savvy networkers and marketers among us already know that in the economy of niceties, well-wishes can fortify loose social and professional ties, sometimes almost instantly. Connections forged via acts of e-kindness are mutually beneficial. Used with skill and sincerity then, niceness is both cultural capital and social glue.

So for all the talk about how the net makes it easier for people to hide behind cloaks of anonymity to be rude and hateful to each other—it is also true that the age of social computing has made it easier to share, communicate, connect, and befriend.

Now is a great time to flex networked niceness.