An article in Saturday’s Telegraph talks about women’s online friendships, and suggests that any stigma around meeting people online which existed ten years ago has almost entirely disappeared.

What’s interesting, though, is this comment from Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University:

“People reveal themselves far quicker emotionally online, because they feel it’s anonymous. My guess is that as we move more towards Skype-based communications [talking over the internet rather than typing] people will be more guarded.”

Does the fact that Skype allows you to hear and see the person you’re having a conversation with make you less open? Or does it increase trust?

This blog post about progressive trust explains one theory of how people begin to trust each other. It talks about credential exchange, which is the way people gradually swap pieces of information about themselves to build up a better picture of who the other person is.

Seeing and hearing someone can be a big part of this — and Skype lets you do just that. I’d argue that Skype makes us more open online.