Comments on: Minimum Population of a "real" Social Network http://eternallyoptimistic.com/2008/03/17/minimum-population-of-a-real-social-network/ Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:44:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Community, Faith and Religion « BatBlog http://eternallyoptimistic.com/2008/03/17/minimum-population-of-a-real-social-network/comment-page-1/#comment-345 Community, Faith and Religion « BatBlog Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:44:32 +0000 http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/?p=254#comment-345 [...] Apr 2008 I stumbled across a discussion on social networks that concerned itself with the nature of social networks and whether or not the Web 2.0 features of [...] [...] Apr 2008 I stumbled across a discussion on social networks that concerned itself with the nature of social networks and whether or not the Web 2.0 features of [...]

]]> By: maguffyn http://eternallyoptimistic.com/2008/03/17/minimum-population-of-a-real-social-network/comment-page-1/#comment-344 maguffyn Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:35:49 +0000 http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/?p=254#comment-344 Pam, Great point, and fantastic to see someone completely within the IT world able to discriminate between the concept and the tool used to implement that concept. Social networks have been around since before humans walked the earth; even today human social networks exist in pubs, sports teams, church communities and so on. The list is endless and so is the nature of the social networks that exist. I have a social network that has existed for 20 years- it has no single common unifying factor; not religion, politics, location, sex, colour of your skin or age. The network has used postal mail, telephones, e-mail distribution and a group from a large internet company beginning with Y!. Will this group of people become a stronger network because they use Ning (or any other Web 2.0 social site)? Absolutely not. Will it change as we grow older, have children, change life priorities etc? Completely, and so will your immediately family network change because of marriage and birth (yay!) and unfortunately death (boo). So, do our, IMHO, incredibly strong networks appear in Ning's 200,000? No, and most likely they never will. And it is precisely because of that fact that the human race will continue to interact with each other in diverse, fantastic and ever more distributed ways. Go on, go talk to someone. It will make their day Pam,

Great point, and fantastic to see someone completely within the IT world able to discriminate between the concept and the tool used to implement that concept.

Social networks have been around since before humans walked the earth; even today human social networks exist in pubs, sports teams, church communities and so on. The list is endless and so is the nature of the social networks that exist. I have a social network that has existed for 20 years- it has no single common unifying factor; not religion, politics, location, sex, colour of your skin or age. The network has used postal mail, telephones, e-mail distribution and a group from a large internet company beginning with Y!. Will this group of people become a stronger network because they use Ning (or any other Web 2.0 social site)? Absolutely not. Will it change as we grow older, have children, change life priorities etc? Completely, and so will your immediately family network change because of marriage and birth (yay!) and unfortunately death (boo).

So, do our, IMHO, incredibly strong networks appear in Ning’s 200,000? No, and most likely they never will. And it is precisely because of that fact that the human race will continue to interact with each other in diverse, fantastic and ever more distributed ways. Go on, go talk to someone. It will make their day

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