Your Social Network

On the internet, everyone is famous to fifteen people.
David Weinberger

Social Network Theory

(Side note: When searching the Wikipedia article for social network theory, the wiki asked me "do you mean the Social Network (film)?," which is the movie that is about to come out about Facebook. This ties in to the "famous to fifteen people" quote, as perhaps with today's connectivity through Facebook, et. al., perhaps we are "famous," or at least followed, by more than fifteen people.)

Social Network Theory focuses on the idea of "weak ties," and their importance in the world of social networking. That is, someone you are acquaintances with will have more helpful connections in the world than a good friend of yours. This is because you and your good friend most likely spend more time together and have many of the same connections in the world.

I can easily explain this through the idea of Facebook. You look at a good friend's profile, and you have 85 friends in common, whereas if you look at the kid-who-sits-next-to-you-in-English-class's profile, you may only have one or two friends in common (and most likely, that connection is in your English class as well.

So, if you're looking for a good home for that stray puppy you found, you're better off asking the random people in a class that you barely know than your best friend who comes to every party with you and eats lunch with you every Thursday at noon.



"Distributed Conversations?"
I did not particularly like the subtitle for this section. I feel it falls more into the "fame" discussion at the beginning of the chapter (though it does need its own heading), or maybe it needs something about popularity.

The most striking thing about this section is the mention of Google (that link is not to the site, but to a comedy/research site that I read daily), who I have decided is fully going to take over the world by 2012. Conspiracy theories aside, I use Google Chrome as my default browser, Google search as my default engine, and Google maps gets me from point A to point B. (Promise!) Rettberg says at the end of the chapter something along the lines of "the more links to a blog, the more popular the blog is to Google's algorithms, and the more likely it will show up in its searches."

It also claims that while the internet is a completely dispersed set of interlinked computers (no central hub), no blogs are created equal---- that is, some are just more popular than others.

If someone who is not in my English class is reading this, it is probably a miracle, as I haven't sent a link out to any of my friends or "weak ties" of any sort.

The same site I linked to for my Google conspiracy theories has a comments section, and some people comment so regularly that they have some sort of friend circle within the site. Some people read the comments just to see one person's response, and they hold daily discussions about nothing in particular.

When I was in high school, I was addicted to a few message forums. Until I commented regularly, people didn't know/care who I was and responded politely to my posts. At the height of it all, I was friends with several of them on messenger sites and Facebook/MySpace, and corresponded daily with them. I ran into computer trouble for a few weeks, quit commenting, new people showed up, and I didn't feel like putting in the work to become a "regular" again.

Social Networking can be "work"?



Technology for Distributed Communities

A blog has persistence-- there is an archive. It exists through a graph of time. (Unlike p2p games like World of Warcraft, where you have to be present for conversations and guild meetings-- some more serious than others. I have TWO friends who have failed out of college because their WoW guild meetings were more important than their schoolwork) Basically, the world of blogging is difficult, as conversations aren't exactly linked to a name, and you can't physically view your readers.... at least without specific coding. With linking, it is possible to gather information about your readers and disseminate information about yourself to other blogs. This little bit of "work" can increase your social network.



Other Social Networks

This book was written in 2007-- and I am absolutely amazed to see how much in detail Rettberg goes in to about Facebook and how it operates. (Also equaling it to the now basically-extinct MySpace). I guess I didn't realize how much Facebook has grown in the last 3 years-- this is the 3rd time I've mentioned it in this blog post, and both of my parents, many of my cousins, aunts and uncles (even my nephew) use it regularly enough to not need a 3-4 page description.

The interesting thing she mentioned is, though, that the News Feed is almost like a blog post about the story of your (or your friend's) life.

"Once enough of your friends have joined a social network site, social pressure can make it very difficult not to participate"
Without Facebook notifications on my phone, I honestly would have missed out on several opportunities to see friends over the summer. I simply don't get on the computer when I am at home, working, as much as I do when I am at school (constantly connected).

The dangers of posting your life to Facebook are actually pretty dangerous-- 2 years ago, a chapter of my sorority got kicked off a campus because a dean saw photos from several weeks before online. Everyone should be careful of how they market themselves online.


Colliding Networks

If I could count the times I wanted to share a link on my Facebook page for my friends and couldn't BECAUSE....

BECAUSE I am too nice about accepting friend requests from:
-Good, close friends from college and high school
-Friends that I'm not that close to anymore but had a decent bond with
-Sorority sisters-close
-Acquaintances
-Family members
-Random person next to me in my English class
-Teachers, employers, family friends, my elementary school principal (who seriously did friend me- I promise he is on a limited profile view)

Basically, exercise discretion when posting your 21st birthday pictures.



Lesson of this post:
What you put online is in an archive, somewhere. Whether it is through facebook, links to other blogs, links from other blogs, or Google recording everything about everybody, what you put out there defines who you are. People (your strong links, your weak links, people you've never met) can see anything, anything about you.