Saturday, January 21, 2012

Strong Ties, Weak Ties in Facebook

tieznew study commissioned by Facebook suggests that the social network sometimes is an "echo chamber," but not always. 


The study of sharing habits of approximately 283 million Facebook users shows that much, perhaps most, sharing activity and influence is with "friends. That should come as no surprise, since that is the way Facebook is structured. 


The issue is the extent to which shared items affect people with whom any single user has only "weak ties," including people you do not know, as well as with people you know well, such as good friends, co-workers and family. 


Researchers looked at the extent to which strong and weak ties affect the likelihood that "novel" or unexpected new information is received from other people with whom any user has "strong ties," compared to "weak ties."

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