Michael and object-centered sociality

Michael has been thinking about the 'fractal' nature of networks.

You may want to check out this post, in which the author argues for an object-centered view of networks. In other words, an object like a URL or a photo is what brings people together. This is a characteristic of networks (as opposed to communities) that I have been recently thinking about: in networks, people can form 'impersonal' connections through objects, not through direct communication with each other (although sometimes it is possible to do both, as Michael suggests in his analysis of Flickr). My question is: Is an object-centered relationship less meaningful than an interpersonal relationship, or just valuable in different ways?