Birds of a feather flock together
“Birds of a feather flock together” seems to be the current trend of modern society. If this has always been the case, this phenomenon takes on a different dimension with the explosion of social networking.
Do you prefer not to subscribe to feeds of information from your favorite newspapers or other sources from which you are close and you trust? Don’t you seeking to connect with other consumers who buy the same type of product than you or those who frequent the same restaurants, go see the same movies? The idea behind the creation of Facebook is that people are interested in knowing what those they know do… In other words, all your relationships form a fairly homogeneous entity from a sociological point of view that corresponds to the identity of your social network.
We have to ask ourselves if this movement will lead us to an impoverishment of our trade? Where is the curiosity and diversity, these treasures that make our society?
I’m not very worried. Firstly for extrinsic reasons to our networks, experience shows that the Web loves the unexpected and novelty (there is only look at the buzz around videos on YouTube and the number of people looking at the hunt for the latest news, pictures, …). Then, if in physical networks and in communities the concept of transitivity of strong ties is very likely (if A knows B and B knows C, then A and C know each other), this is not necessarily the case in virtual networks. In fact, our virtual networks are much more diverse than they appear. This is mainly due to the ability of virtual networks to maintain over time strong ties. As I already said in a previous post, I am convinced that the strength of social networking today (like Facebook) can maintain strong links (most of which disappeared over time with distance or other life event) to develop strong ties (by regular exchanges very creative sense, of confidence with an emotional commitment) and create weak ties more easily (by sending a message or other interaction infrequent) acting as a “sociological glue.
As a consequence, the density and the number of strong ties by person are much higher than in physical network. The important thing is to facilitate links between the various networks and other communities.
