July 14, 2004

• Welcome to…
  Mr. Motley’s
  Neighborhood

  
  

  Will You Be My Friend?
  
  Only On My Own Turf.

  By Esther Dyson, Editor at Large 

  
  

  Special to ZDNet
  

  July 12, 2004, 3:00 AM PT

  On social-networking Web services:
  

  
  “Perhaps people will revert to private social networks–ones they
  manage locally….

  Perhaps the law of networks–the strength of a tie degrades
  by the square of the number of links–would become more apparent, and
  perhaps that would be a good thing.

  I’m not sure how good that is as a business model, but it works as a social model.”

  The beautiful, brilliant, and charming Esther Dyson seems to have
  suffered a temporary lapse in brilliance with the above remark on the
  strength of ties in social networks….

  “the law of networks–the strength of a tie degrades
  by the square of the number of links….”

  Here are some useful references encountered while fact-checking Ms. Dyson’s assertion about the “law of networks” –
  
  Links on Graph Theory and Network Analysis

  The Navigability of Strong Ties:
  Small Worlds, Tie Strength and Network Topology (pdf)
  
  Modeling Coleman’s Friendly Association Networks (pdf)
  
  The Strength of Weak Ties:
  A Network Theory Revisited
  (pdf)

  Scientific Collaboration Networks, II (pdf)
  (Deals specifically with tie-strength computation.) 

  Dynamic Visualization of Social Networks

  and, finally, a diagram of social networks in Shakespeare that
  conclusively demonstrates that there is no simple relationship between
  strength of ties and number of ties:
  
  Cleopatra’s Social Ties (png)

  Perhaps what Ms. Dyson had in mind was the following (courtesy of The Motley Fool):

  “Metcalfe’s Law of Networks states that the value of a network grows by the square
  of the size of the network. Translated, this means that a network that
  is twice as large as another network will actually be at least four
  times as valuable. Why? Because four times as many interconnections are
  possible between participants in the larger network.
  

  When you add
  a fourth person to a group of three, you don’t add just one more
  networked relationship. You add several. The new individual can network
  with all three of the existing persons, and vice versa. The Internet is
  no different. It became more and more valuable as the numbers of
  computers using it grew.”
  

  For another perspective on this alleged law, from science fiction author Orson Scott Card, see The Group, a Log24 entry of Sept. 24, 2002.

  Elsewhere, in a discussion of social-networking software:

  “Esther Dyson starts with a request that people turn to their left and
  ask the person next to them, ‘Will you be my friend?’ The room erupts
  in chatter, but, of course, the problem is we don’t have enough
  information about one another to make a snap decision about that
  question.”

  Obviously, ties resulting from such a request will be weak, rather
  than strong.  However, as study of the above network-theory links
  will reveal, weak ties can sometimes be more useful than strong
  ties.  An example:

  Passing the Peace at Mass.

  Compare and contrast with
  Ms. Dyson’s request to turn and
  ask the Mr. Rogers question,
  “Will you be my friend?”

  The best response to this question
  that I know of was contained in
  a good-bye letter from a girl named
  
  Lucero in Cuernavaca
  in the early 1960′s:

  “Si me deveras quieres,
  deja me en paz.”

  (See Shining Forth.)

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