Social Network: the set of all other persons with whom that individual has recurring communication
Drawn from Agneessens, Waege, & Lievens, 2006, Johnson, 1992, & Tichy & Fombrun, 1979 but the phrasing is my own -
Takes care of the problem of having to then define social relations and allows flexibility in defining various types of network connection by type and frequency of communication.
Of course - this does not have much to do with your overall argument, but you did ask for thoughts ;)
Jesse Farmer
· 8 months ago
Hah. If you look at the HTML source I have a comment: "Let's see if anyone makes me define social relation!"
I originally had a paragraph defining a social relation in a similar that way, "By 'social relation' I mean a relation between people that permits communication."
I think it's enough that communication is possible, irrespective of whether communication is "regular." For example, one map of a social network is the set of everyone's email address books.
Somebody
· 8 months ago
Your dead on about TopFriends on Facebook, it's one the largest social networks online. There's no API for TopFriends, don't be jaded by the URL =). Though, Causes has been integrated into the TopFriends news stream which proposes a possible platform but that would get sticky with facebook and Slide knows this =)
Luke Shepard
· 7 months ago
Nice post, I agree that all "social networks" are also applications. As each app builds on the successful apps before them, the bootstrapping process becomes faster and faster.
> What does Facebook gain by having Top Friends on its Platform? Nothing substantial, as far as I can tell. > What does it lose? Control and insight over the activities of its userbase.
I disagree here- Facebook gains quite a lot by having Top Friends on the platform. Users want to say who they really like a lot. By building that feature, Slide adds a lot of value to Facebook's users. That makes Facebook a more valuable place, which in turn makes it a more valuable platform and helps it build a more complete social graph.
As far as control, it is better for those users to interact on Facebook, even if it's via an app, than completely off the site on another service altogether.
All Comments
Social Network: the set of all other persons with whom that individual has recurring communication
Drawn from Agneessens, Waege, & Lievens, 2006, Johnson, 1992, & Tichy & Fombrun, 1979 but the phrasing is my own -
Takes care of the problem of having to then define social relations and allows flexibility in defining various types of network connection by type and frequency of communication.
Of course - this does not have much to do with your overall argument, but you did ask for thoughts ;)
I originally had a paragraph defining a social relation in a similar that way, "By 'social relation' I mean a relation between people that permits communication."
I think it's enough that communication is possible, irrespective of whether communication is "regular." For example, one map of a social network is the set of everyone's email address books.
> What does Facebook gain by having Top Friends on its Platform? Nothing substantial, as far as I can tell.
> What does it lose? Control and insight over the activities of its userbase.
I disagree here- Facebook gains quite a lot by having Top Friends on the platform. Users want to say who they really like a lot. By building that feature, Slide adds a lot of value to Facebook's users. That makes Facebook a more valuable place, which in turn makes it a more valuable platform and helps it build a more complete social graph.
As far as control, it is better for those users to interact on Facebook, even if it's via an app, than completely off the site on another service altogether.