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Barry:

As you are well-aware (since you wrote a lot of it) the literature on
social support is where one finds much on friendship. I have gone back
to Claude Fischer's work, To Dwell Among Friends (1982). That does not
end up at networked individualism.

I wonder in the manner of The Strength of Weak Ties if Face Book etc.
are not "proto-personal networks" based on shared interests, etc. But
they exist only as *possibly enabling* a path to stronger
relationship--just as a weak tie enables a job. Not used, they
dissolve.

Recent advances in brain science at Harvard and U Wisconsin suggest that
anticipation and repetition are vital to stimulating long-term memory
vibrancy. If we see a picture or a link on Face Book, perhaps we are
excited by sexual or social responses that may anticipate a broadening.
If it stays there, we are apt to use the link--like a weak tie in
waiting.

I know many executives who "work" cocktail parties to find important
enablers for their social and financial agendas. In essence they are
positioning resources for social support. If paths repeatedly cross at
the "right" parties, agendas are formed.

These are specialized and complex as you suggest--I'd follow Goffman
(1964) and Adele Clarke and call it "situational," but they are also
being charged in a way perhaps analogous to a capacitor. Has anyone
looked at social networks in a language of capacitors? I don't know.

I think Face Book could have categories of friends, but categories
politicize. The jumble is not a fault, it is an advantage related to
(but different than) weak ties.

Ryan Lanham



-----Original Message-----
From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Barry Wellman
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 4:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: From Social Isolation in America to Facebook

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SPOILER WARNING: This posting will wind up with Networked Individualism.

The meaning of friendship has been preoccupying me -- and others -- more
than I would have expected. It started with the publication of
McPherson,
Smith-Lovin, and Brashears' "Social Isolation in America" in Amer Soc
Rev, June 2006. This evoked a media panic that friendship was dying,
based
on a shrinkage in the number of people "who discuss important matters"
from nearly 3 in 1984 to slightly more than 2 in 2005. (And nearly a
quarter of the American adult pop said they had no one.)

I spent a lot of time with the media for the next month pointing out
that
research suggests that most very close ties are specialized, and that
"discussing important matters" wasn't the only way that people are
close.
I noted that other surveys -- such as our Connected Lives study in
Toronto
and the Pew Internet "Strength of Internet Ties" study have found a mean
of 10+ Very Close friends and relatives.

(These numbers probably seem high to non-North Americans. German and
French folk frequently tell me that they are astonished at how easily
Americans call someone "friend" when they, by contrast, take 5 or so
years
to admit someone to their charmed cognitive friendship circle.)

I also pointed folks to Peter Bearman (& coauthor's) 2005 Social Forces'
article showing the variety of matters that people think are important
to
discuss. While most people have their own construct of what are
important
matters, they'd be mistaken to think that others share their zeitgeist.
To
me, it is "world peace" (just like Miss Congeniality), the state of the
internet, and various family issues, but Bearman shows that to others it
might be what kind of haircut or tatoo to get, plus the usual boy/girl
friend issues.

This leads me to the Facebook fiasco.

First, as danah boyd says on her blog, a Facebook, MySpace, etc.
"friend"
often is different from what most of us otherwise would consider a
"friend". Folks on the AOIR list reported mean numbers of greater than
100
Facebook "friends" in major American universities. By contrast, no
survey
has shown such high numbers, even though they have shown larger numbers
than the 2 that McPherson found in analyzing the 2005 US General Social
Survey.

One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two
false assumptions:
(a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend.
(b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group.

In reality, friendships not only are specialized in content, but vary in
intensity. It's rare that someone would want to share everything with
almost any "friend".

Our data also show the obvious: it's rare that all Very Close friends
(and
relatives) live in the same densely-knit group. The news that we want to
share with friends in one cluster of relationships may not be something
we
would want to share with those in other clusters.

In short, we live in a world of "networked individualism" in which we're
forever navigating through complex social networks -- assessing who and
when to tell what.

Facebook got both of these wrong (in addition to foolishly not
consulting):

It propogated all changes to all Facebook Friends.

Gosh, we could have saved them a bunch of money and reputation.

 Barry
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162

      You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of
 "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace"
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