Maintain strong ties. Community or social network 4
From the translator. This text is the fourth miniseries text from 4 publications on social networks and communities, their similarities and differences, as well as their interrelationships with each other. All these texts are currently translated:
This post is part 4 of my mini-series, exploring the relationship between communities and social networks. Each article is based on the concepts put forward in previous ones. Therefore, if you missed one of them, I recommend that you first read them before moving on. Earlier, in this mini-series, we found that weak links can be formed in two ways: in communities and through social networks. However, only in communities do weak ties develop into strong ones. In this publication, we explore what happens after strong ties are established.
Social networks support established connections.
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As we remember from previous discussions, each person is a member of many communities that intersect with each other or nest within each other. This is due to the fact that each person has many different interests, preferences, skills, etc. We can form weak bonds in many different contexts. These are all very different relationships, while Facebook mixes them into one heap with the same name “friends”. In reality, they should be divided into brothers, drinking companions, badminton partners, friends from the chess club, gourmands, film fans, naturalists, hitchhikers, etc. Moreover, people move to other cities, transfer to another job, change interests, or simply enter the next stage of their life - i.e. they constantly leave some communities and join others.
So how do people cope with all their connections that they have formed within different communities? And how does an individual support the relationships he has built when moving from one community to another? Most likely you already have an answer. If relationships are well developed (that is, they represent strong relationships, and not just weak links), they become part of a personal social network. Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are in fact social graphs that display a variety of links in our social network (see the article ABCs of social network analysis ).
As I mentioned in previous publications, I now have some good acquaintances from the Lithosphere ( Lithosphere is an online community of Lithium , dedicated to communities - a comment of a translator), as well as from some LinkedIn groups in which I participated. Our communication around common interests stimulated the development of our relationship. Later on, my former acquaintances in the community became part of my network on LinkedIn, which, in turn, is part of my personal social network dedicated to my professional relationships (see the article Aza of social network analysis ). And now, even if they leave the lithosphere, or if I leave groups on LinkedIn, we will still continue to communicate and interact with each other. And since we had a sufficient number of interactions in order to build strong ties out of our weak ties, we will remember the context of our relations and trust each other's opinions in the appropriate context.
Therefore, successful communities need to be integrated with social networking sites so that community members can preserve the valuable relationships they have built. If you have not heard, we just just launched our Facebook app yesterday. This is our first step towards integrating our community with the social networking site platform.
Without social networks, communities are conserved (are siloed). When a member of such a community leaves him, most likely he will have to lose all of his relationships that he has built here. All this is certainly undesirable for community members, but moreover, it also has adverse consequences for the community as a whole.
Canned communities look like silos
What are the harmful effects of the mothballed community?
Those who have invested their time and energy are rather reluctant to leave the community, knowing that they cannot save anything that they have built in the community. This impedes the circulation of super users between communities. At first glance, this may seem like a good state of affairs, because you save valuable super-users. But if we analyze this situation with the help of game theory, then everything will be exactly the opposite. The point is that there are many communities, and your community is just one of them. Each community has its own super users, just like yours. But if all the super users are reluctant to leave their communities, then among them there will be few who can come and join yours.
Since the number of people outside your community is usually much larger than its own population, the potential influx into your community will almost always be much more outflow from it. Therefore, by limiting the circulation of super-users, you can keep some of them, but at the same time you lose the potential influx of hundreds and thousands of such users. All this, after all, impedes the exchange of knowledge and ideas between communities.
1. Social networks allow people to maintain strong relationships built in communities, as well as manage them.
2. Communities well integrated with social networks:
- Promote the exchange of knowledge and ideas between communities through the circulation of super-users
- Encourage greater participation and better interaction between participants
Although weak ties can form in both communities and social networks, these two social structures have played different roles in human history. Communities have always been designed to grow strong connections from the weak, while social networks have existed to preserve and maintain these important relationships. We need both of these structures! It is the complementarity of communities and social networks that allowed them to be the two most stable social structures of all that ever existed in human history.
So, we conclude our discussion on the socio-anthropological role of communities and social networks. And now, with a more holistic perception of social media (which are technologies built around online communities and social networks), they shouldn't look so frightening, should they?
- Community or social network?
- How do people make connections
- From weak ties to strong
- Maintain strong ties
This post is part 4 of my mini-series, exploring the relationship between communities and social networks. Each article is based on the concepts put forward in previous ones. Therefore, if you missed one of them, I recommend that you first read them before moving on. Earlier, in this mini-series, we found that weak links can be formed in two ways: in communities and through social networks. However, only in communities do weak ties develop into strong ones. In this publication, we explore what happens after strong ties are established.
Communities need social networks to maintain relationships
Social networks support established connections.
')
As we remember from previous discussions, each person is a member of many communities that intersect with each other or nest within each other. This is due to the fact that each person has many different interests, preferences, skills, etc. We can form weak bonds in many different contexts. These are all very different relationships, while Facebook mixes them into one heap with the same name “friends”. In reality, they should be divided into brothers, drinking companions, badminton partners, friends from the chess club, gourmands, film fans, naturalists, hitchhikers, etc. Moreover, people move to other cities, transfer to another job, change interests, or simply enter the next stage of their life - i.e. they constantly leave some communities and join others.
So how do people cope with all their connections that they have formed within different communities? And how does an individual support the relationships he has built when moving from one community to another? Most likely you already have an answer. If relationships are well developed (that is, they represent strong relationships, and not just weak links), they become part of a personal social network. Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are in fact social graphs that display a variety of links in our social network (see the article ABCs of social network analysis ).
As I mentioned in previous publications, I now have some good acquaintances from the Lithosphere ( Lithosphere is an online community of Lithium , dedicated to communities - a comment of a translator), as well as from some LinkedIn groups in which I participated. Our communication around common interests stimulated the development of our relationship. Later on, my former acquaintances in the community became part of my network on LinkedIn, which, in turn, is part of my personal social network dedicated to my professional relationships (see the article Aza of social network analysis ). And now, even if they leave the lithosphere, or if I leave groups on LinkedIn, we will still continue to communicate and interact with each other. And since we had a sufficient number of interactions in order to build strong ties out of our weak ties, we will remember the context of our relations and trust each other's opinions in the appropriate context.
Therefore, successful communities need to be integrated with social networking sites so that community members can preserve the valuable relationships they have built. If you have not heard, we just just launched our Facebook app yesterday. This is our first step towards integrating our community with the social networking site platform.
Without social networks, communities are conserved (are siloed). When a member of such a community leaves him, most likely he will have to lose all of his relationships that he has built here. All this is certainly undesirable for community members, but moreover, it also has adverse consequences for the community as a whole.
What is wrong with canned communities?
Canned communities look like silos
What are the harmful effects of the mothballed community?
- It weakly motivates people to participate in the community and put their own strength into it.
- It prevents the flow of new super-users, thus limiting the exchange of new knowledge and ideas.
Those who have invested their time and energy are rather reluctant to leave the community, knowing that they cannot save anything that they have built in the community. This impedes the circulation of super users between communities. At first glance, this may seem like a good state of affairs, because you save valuable super-users. But if we analyze this situation with the help of game theory, then everything will be exactly the opposite. The point is that there are many communities, and your community is just one of them. Each community has its own super users, just like yours. But if all the super users are reluctant to leave their communities, then among them there will be few who can come and join yours.
Since the number of people outside your community is usually much larger than its own population, the potential influx into your community will almost always be much more outflow from it. Therefore, by limiting the circulation of super-users, you can keep some of them, but at the same time you lose the potential influx of hundreds and thousands of such users. All this, after all, impedes the exchange of knowledge and ideas between communities.
Conclusion
1. Social networks allow people to maintain strong relationships built in communities, as well as manage them.
2. Communities well integrated with social networks:
- Promote the exchange of knowledge and ideas between communities through the circulation of super-users
- Encourage greater participation and better interaction between participants
Although weak ties can form in both communities and social networks, these two social structures have played different roles in human history. Communities have always been designed to grow strong connections from the weak, while social networks have existed to preserve and maintain these important relationships. We need both of these structures! It is the complementarity of communities and social networks that allowed them to be the two most stable social structures of all that ever existed in human history.
So, we conclude our discussion on the socio-anthropological role of communities and social networks. And now, with a more holistic perception of social media (which are technologies built around online communities and social networks), they shouldn't look so frightening, should they?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/138483/
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