Weak & Strong Ties

I retained something that my lecturer mention today that I found especially interesting. This matter was weak and strong ties within a network. I looked at Raymond's Trend forecasters handbook but I wasn't completely satisfied with his explanation of the subject. So I kept researching about it a bit more and I found this clearer vision of weak and strong ties.

"In Mark Granovetter's social world, our close friends are often friends with each other as well. The network behind such a clustered society consists of small, fully connected circles of friends connected by strong ties, shown as blod lines. Weak ties, shown as thin lines, connect the members of these friendship circles to their acquaintances, who have strong ties to their own friends. Weak ties play an important role in any number of social activities, from spreading rumors to getting a job." 

(Barabasi, A.L. (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. Plume: Penguin Group)

I have been thinking about it and I came out with the conclusion that for my own network is going to be much better to use weak ties. Because I am interested in getting as many different opinions as posible. 

PERSONAL NETWORKS

A few days ago we were told in one of this module lectures to visualize our own network. So we all tried to draw a diagram of it in a piece of paper. (Later today I will be posting and Illustrator version of mine) This matter reminded me of something very similar that I had seen in Raymond's Trend Forecaster's Handbook, "The Friend Wheel". It is an application developed for Facebook and Tweeter by Thomas Fletcher, this app basically connects all your Facebook/Tweeter friends to each other in a coloured wheel. I tried use it and make my own friends connections wheel, but seams to be having some problems to generate new ones, so I will just post a screen-shot from someone else's wheel that I found on the internet.

NETWORK = CONNECTIONS/LINKS

What is good about networks is that we get to know about people thoughts way more than "in real life". Lets for example look at facebook. We can see all this information about what loads of people (that allow us to see their profile) post, that otherwise we could have never knew. Things such as pictures of the summer vacations of someone that I met in a party, or maybe I could discover that someone I know is a great writer because they published their blog site. Networks give us the opportunity to get in touch with interesting matters and people very easily. That makes researching much simple.

Fine. So how can I use a network as a research tool? What kind of information can I get from it?
As I wrote in my last post, information on the internet is not always reliable. What it is reliable and extremely useful is the fact that because anyone can write, anyone can give an opinion or expres a feeling. about something.

I post therefore I am

Yes... I know I should have being posting every day so I get used to it and I do it as a habit blah blah blah...  But I was looking for the motivation to be dropped down from the sky just like doughnuts or something. It didn't. So now I find my self writing at almost 3am trying to find that motivation by my self. Lets start.




"The network is the dominant culture ideology" ok... Singers create new singles based on fan's opinions/petitions on their web sides, politicians check Tweeter for feedback from the population, designers rely some of their advertising to not necessarily profesional people that have many followers in their blogs . Apparently if nowadays our ideas aren't posted somewhere on the internet they "don't exit". Therefore if we intent to be known for our interest, work, ideas we see our selfs in the need of getting them online exposing our thoughts.

Lately anyone can write about anything and they will be published, because we can actually publish whatever we want for free! This can be extremely useful sometimes but because anyone can do it, how can we decide which of that information is reliable???