Comments on: Cognitive Phase Points in Social Network Sizes http://scwn.net/2009/04/25/cognitive-phase-points-in-social-networks/ mind, music, mapping, manipulation Tue, 01 May 2012 16:44:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: jjdonald http://scwn.net/2009/04/25/cognitive-phase-points-in-social-networks/#comment-39 Mon, 11 May 2009 16:42:37 +0000 http://www.scwn.net/?p=298#comment-39 Thanks for the links, Joe good stuff. I have a number of colleagues working on social networking application theory in office situations, so I’ll pass this on to them as well.

I agree that self-promotion is the motivation, and that in fact, all of these “weak ties” can be extremely beneficial, at least in a professional sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Granovetter

However, it feels like there’s really no fine grained control on facebook. Everyone’s either your friend, and can see everything, or not. It would be interesting to think about how to structure information services around our more natural sense of familiarity about people.

]]> By: Joe McCarthy http://scwn.net/2009/04/25/cognitive-phase-points-in-social-networks/#comment-38 Mon, 11 May 2009 14:22:27 +0000 http://www.scwn.net/?p=298#comment-38 “Self-promotion” – conscious and unconscious – has always been a primary motivation behind the use of social networks – online and offline. I think that these things tend to work themselves out, and that most people tend to get their desired level of interaction and intimacy through their connections with “friends” (reflecting, in many cases, the numbers and levels you propose).

The Economist recently published an article on “Primates on Facebook” (http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176775):

Cameron Marlow, the “in-house sociologist” at Facebook … found that the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120 … an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

The Life with Alacrity blog (http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/) has recently run an illuminating series of posts on “Community by the Numbers” that may [also] be of interest.

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