Strong, Weak, and Temporary Ties

by Paul Adams on 2010/04/09
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EXCERPT:

It took both the telephone and the mobile phone 15 years to amass 100 million users, but Facebook did it in 9 months. We see more and more people becoming connected on online social networks, and it seems our networks are growing exponentially. But the reality is, social networks rarely add to our number of connections. We’ve already met almost all the people we’re connected to on social networks. We’re already connected to these people offline. Social networks simply make the connections visible. For example, we often connect with old school friends, and catch up over a couple of wall posts. But rarely do we continue the conversation once we’ve connected, and over time we forget that the connections exist. In fact, Facebook users often have no interactions with up to 50% of their connections.¹ When we study how people are interacting on social networks, we see that most interactions are with a very small subset of the people we’re connected to.

The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, and many users have many more.² Yet despite having hundreds of friends, most people on Facebook only interact regularly with 4 to 7 people,³ and for 90% of Facebook users, 20% of their friends account for 70% of all interactions.⁴ We also see this with phone usage. We have hundreds of people in our phone contacts, yet 80% of phone calls are made to the same 4 people. We know dozens of people who use Skype, yet 80% of Skype calls are made to 2 people.⁵ Even when people play computer games online, they mostly play with people they know offline.⁶

We also have varied interactions with the people we’re not as close to. We find out about new jobs, not through our friends, but through friends of friends. When our friends’ friends’ friends lose weight, we lose weight.⁷ We go onto eBay and buy things for hundreds and thousands of dollars from people we’ve never met, and will probably never interact with again.

We have many diverse relationships with the people in our lives, yet the web doesn’t support this very well.

On Facebook (left), all my “friends” are treated equally. I’m presented with a long alphabetical list. Some of these people I would trust with my deepest secrets, and there are others that I’ve met less than five times. Yet they are grouped together in a big bucket of “friends”. Of the people who are “friends” with me on Facebook, there are many that I wouldn’t call a “friend”. I may call them an acquaintance, or a colleague, or even a family member, but they’re not in the same category as my closest friends.

In my phone (right), all my contacts are treated equally. I’m presented with a long alphabetical list. My best friend is given the same number of pixels as someone I haven’t spoken to in 5 years. I may be able to access my most frequently contacted people via a ‘Favorites’ tab, but these people are still presented in the same way as the people I’ve lost touch with. On LinkedIn (right), all my connections are treated equally. Yet I have worked with some of them every day for years, and there are others that I met once at a conference.

Our social web tools must start to understand the strength of ties, that we have stronger relationships with some people than with others. And with this knowledge they need to adapt.

There are three kinds of relationship ties:

• Strong ties: People we care deeply about.
• Weak ties: People we are loosely connected to, like friends of friends.
• Temporary ties: People we don’t know, and interact with temporarily.

Let’s look at each type of tie, and how we might design for them.

Most people have less than 10 strong ties

When designing for strong ties:

• Think about their existing means of communication. Phone calls, text messages, email. Strong ties already have established ways to interact, we should support them, and not try and replace them with our own messaging systems.
• Showing more information about the ten closest people is likely to be much more valuable than showing less information about many more people.
• Avoid generic terms such as “Friends”. This will likely lead to over-populating groups and reducing their relevance.
• Suggest connections to people, but communicate the effects of adding new connections.

People have about 150 weak ties that they stay up-to-date with

When designing for weak ties:

• Consider the trade-off between communication and trust. Weak ties may be more knowledgeable about something we’re interested in, but we may trust them less. It may be important to show our other shared ties, or expose their sources of knowledge, so that we can increase the trust between people.
• Make it easy for people to expose their networks to people they trust with that data. This will open up links between weak ties, without compromising user privacy.
• Enable appropriate communication channels between weak ties. It may be better to go through, or highlight, a shared strong tie.

The web is increasing our interactions with temporary ties

Following are four common types of temporary ties:

1. People sometimes interact with temporary ties around an information need. People needing information seek people with knowledge of the answer. Once the request for information has been fulfilled, interaction with these ties usually ceases. You may ask a person in the street for directions, or online you may seek information from people on Yahoo! Answers. This type of temporary tie is increasingly important for the future of web search. People are looking to other people, rather than businesses, to answer certain queries.

When designing for temporary ties:

• Prioritize a great system for building reputation. Allow people to give feedback to one another.
• Encourage people to expose content that will increase trust in their identity. This could be their real name, a real photo rather than an avatar, or proof of their qualifications.
• Prioritize a great system for building trust between people. This may be highlighting shared connections, shared groups, or shared interests.
• Don’t incentivize people with money, incentivize them to build their reputation.

Conclusion

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