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Designing for Social Interaction
By Jon Dron 16 May 2010 @ 9:03am Comments (7)
http://boxesandarrows.com/view/designing-for-social
Interesting discussion of the strength of social ties in social software systems by Paul Adams. He talks of strong, weak and temporary ties and notes the design issues are different for each (and provides some useful insights on ways of trust-building for those temporary ties, many of which are collective-based).
The strong vs weak/temporary separation maybe reflects the division of groups and networks that some of us like to use, but the weak/temporary is a useful further subdivision of networks. It may be that some groups, especially in education, might fall into the 'temporary' category too, which suggests that we might have some interestingly different design problems if we try to form strong but temporary formalised groups.
Jon Dron
still learning, never learning enough
Comments
By seeing ties as three categories it could spawn some intriquing functionality.
1) Is there a movement from temporary to weak to strong ties based on trust and respect and is it useful to build functionality that monitors communications and recommends ties settings? For instance would a sufficient quantity and quality of communications move back-and-forth between one-way to two-way relationships? Is there a relationship between trust and respect and the direction of communication and should that be supported through features?
2) Social media seems to provide different opportunities depending on which tie we are focusing on. With strong ties, it is about communication depth (pictures, video-chat, blogging) with a small group, while for weak ties it is about shallow communication with a large group and temporary ties it appears to be deep communication over a short period or objective. Should we be able to select functionality by the strength of ties, groups or a combination of the two?
Interesting! Making soft technologies into hard ones is risky, however, if we are intending to influence or tamper with relationships between people...
1) rarely, if ever, I think. On the whole, it seems that we maintain very few of those strong ties so there'd be little value in trying to magnify that, apart from making it a bit easier to communicate with those that we contact on a regular basis. It might be interesting to relate this to dana boyd's thoughts on different kinds of network at http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/07/28/would_the_real.html because I think the strong/weak distinction might apply very differently for different kinds of connection. I'm always a little wary of things that only look at quantities without exploring the qualitative stuff: For instance, the fact that I connect via a social network to my brothers and sisters pretty rarely, that doesn't mean there are weak ties there, while the fact that I communicate a lot regarding operational issues with admin folk doesn't make the ties strong.
2) that sounds like an intriguing idea. However, we would also have to consider many other things about the context because there are many different kinds of relationship, especially in an environment like this one, and ties in one context may provide very different needs to those in another - for instance, a strong working tie in a research group would suggest very different kinds of things to reveal/communicate about than things we would share if we had strong ties with a drinking buddy. It might be confusing when things overlap - for instance, if I chat a lot in real time with someone about some things in some contexts, but use other media for others (true for me in many cases). Again, making a bit easier to communicate with those with whom we communicate frequently would not be a bad plan, as long as it adapts well to those temporary ties.
The ability to have recommendations based on previous communications came up in a discussion with a business development manager so I don't believe the intention was to influence or tamper but rather facilitate weak and temporary relationship management and the communications from some tool such as Elgg.
I assume context would also include time as well as depth. A ten year weak relationship would be different than a six month weak relationship.
I think the weak relationship strengthens when there are important overlaps, for example an overlap off "connectors" who may influence others and bring them into the discussion -- even if they are not the central initiators but rather weak ties -- or perahps weak links go the initial topic or information. A connector-type role is a term used in the Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) to explain how innovations take off. What struck me as connectors do what they do for the love of it and love people. They usually love to connect to others and build upon those interpersonal interactions even if they are weak-ties. Malcolm also talks about Mavens -- since they are people who are really "into" something and people go to them to ask advice on whatever area they may be "into" (perhaps passionate or obessed about). I found the term phrase "recommendations based on previous communications" interesting in this context (about post by Eric) as it brings forth the idea of what is the "quality" of the previous communication and why and to who, for example a connector, a Maven or a salesperson. I also see Jon Dron's idea tha "strong/weak distinction might apply very differently for different kinds of connections" -- to the quality within a connector or a Maven or a salesperson for example. I am questioning further what Malcolm Gladwell was exploring -- but in terms of online communications. Jo Ann
Gladwell's ideas are a nice way to start thinking about that complexity - certainly some kind of overlay would help. It's the qualitative differences in relationships that are hard to bring out, and that's certainly one way to start doing so (I have a vague recollection of reading about someone having tested Gladwell's hypothesis using social network analysis, but can't recall the outcome: does anyone know of any?)
It might also be interesting to consider different kinds of social capital in this respect - bonding, bridging, linking - which seem to fit quite well with the weak tie/strong tie notion and might be more in line with Eric's thoughts on temporary relationship management. What we want in such a context is probably both bridging and linking social capital, but probably not bonding social capital.
I understand Gladwell's "Mavens" and "Connectors" to be much the same as Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations) "Opinion Leaders" and "Change Agents" would this be appropriate?
On a different note. Rogers Generalization 8-12 States: Individuals tend to be linked to others who are close to them in physical distance and who are relatively homophilous in social characteristics. Would this then suggest social networking systems and virtual worlds should be effective because they provide rich communication effectively reducing the impact of physical distance.
I'd agree with that. Interesting discussion.
Again, it's risky to over-generalise though - a tendency tends to veil the specifics and very far from all communities involve physically close, socially homophilous people. For instance, it's worth distinguishing geographical communities, communities of action, communities of practice, communities of interest etc (there are many dozens of definitions of 'community' and thousands of sub-types). The benefits probably apply in most cases but they probably apply differently and it's not all about physical distance.
In many cases I'm unconvinced that SNs and virtual worlds provide 'rich' communication, though I guess it depends on your definition. In fact, once we leave the physical environment, it's pretty ambiguous what the benefits of richer communication are and it is sometimes the lack of richness that gives benefits. For example, it's easier to tell if someone is lying if you hear them on the phone than if you are talking to them in real life. Discussion forum posts tend to be more thought-through and offer different (not necessarily better) value to learners than real-time conversations. Twitter posts work differently than blog posts and give us more control over the pace in some ways (less in others). It's not so much that communication is rich, perhaps, as that it is possible in a broader range of ways and contexts. None of them, including the most immersive video conference, come close to being with a person in a physical space but each shapes and influences how we interact in different ways, sometimes offering something more suited to our needs (often not). I'd suggest maybe it's the breadth and specialisation rather than the depth that brings benefits?