Tom Peters (week 6's reading response)
From Collectivate Course Wikis
- This page is for week 6's reading response to Tom Peters' research. For his main page, see Tom Peters. For his research page, see Tom Peters (research page).
The quote:
The shape of the social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More "open" networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes) ("Social network").
My response:
I'm not sure if I completely agree with this statement. I understand the point he makes about a closely knit group of friends already share the same experiences and knowledge but I'm not sure if I buy into a more loosely connected network being more useful. When I think of the biggest social networks I think of sites such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook each with millions of users. Those users have hundreds to thousands of friends. These sites fill this definition of a loose social network, however I really don't see any real useful ness behind this. To my knowledge, this people just simply add someone as their friend and after that nothing becomes of it. Sure they may post a comment to their webpage but what usefulness do these people actually provide other than the ability to gloat that you have one more "friend." I also can't stop thinking about the Trendspotting with Demetri Martin on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It's a spoof on this notion of an online friend and how people really don't attempt to maintain these connections.
What I'm hoping for SNV, is that we can make loose social connections useful. Currently on sites like MySpace, there is no benefit to having 1 friend or having 9,000. But what we want to implement with Socially Networked Video is a voting system weighted by the amount of friends you have. I'm not deadset on making sure this is implemented, but I think a feature like this could add many useful functions. One being a reason to actually make social networks. Another being a biproduct of this where user's invite their friends to join the site. Also another useful function we want to add to SNV is the ability to invite everyone in your social network who is currently online to participate in a video.
As of right now I don't think Social Networks are truely reaching their full potential. What I'm hoping for is that SNV can help make a step in that direction.
Works Cited
"Social network." Wikipedia. 28 Feb. 2006. 3 Mar. 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network>.