B. Mann Consulting

Six degrees of separation or
unification? (Kuroshin)
By
eszter, Sat Aug 2nd 2003 at
03:45:57 AM EST

Every Internet user knows that the
network helps us easily connect with numerous people across wide distances. Over
the years, various services have sprung up to facilitate such connections. But
is it always a good idea to join such social networks? Is bigger always
better?

There has been an increasing amount of discussion recently about Friendster, a relatively new online
service based on connecting people to others through their existing social
networks. The service has been enthusiastically covered by the likes of The Village Voice,
and Slate describing how Friendster is
the newest great social - and procrastinatory - tool given all the information
one can glean about people in one's social circles through the service. Since
newspapers specialize in covering the news not the olds perhaps it is not
surprising that they will always want to find a new twist on something even if
it is simply the repetition of something old. But Web sites like this existed in
the past and had trouble surviving. SixDegrees and PlanetAll were two extremely
similar services in the 1990s, but both were victims of the Internet bust and
ceased operations years ago despite the fact that they had as many users are
Friendster does today.

Many express much excitement about Friendster and even claim that it is the
next Google in online popularity and importance. I do not share this enthusiasm
and here is why.

People tend to focus on the seemingly fun and useful aspects of Friendster.
However, it can have serious shortcomings. Beyond the more obvious concerns
regarding the truthfulness of information conveyed on the sites (the most
extreme but quite transparent version of which are the bogus accounts of Jesus
and God that people have created), networks like this can dilute the importance
of social ties and can lead to uncomfortable situations when acquaintances from
different parts of one's social circles intermingle.

It may be a good idea to take care in signing up to such a service and
indiscriminately adding "friends" because it is not always ideal for different
networks of one's life to intertwine too much. We are all members of various
social groups. We have family ties, workplace ties, friends from childhood,
friends from high school, from college, possibly graduate school, not to mention
our myriad of other social relations through other affiliations. There may be
reasons people don't want to see these different worlds overlap too much.

A fairly obvious case is a person who is not very open about a particular
aspect of her identity (e.g. sexuality, religious affiliation, political
convictions) in one realm of her life, say at work, but has a group of friends
who are very clear about that part of her identity. Does she necessarily want
these different worlds intertwining endlessly? Even if someone does not have any
major hidden identities, we all play different social roles depending on the
situation and people around us so things can get complicated if these
criss-cross too much without boundaries. Even if you think you are one of those
people who has nothing to hide and who behaves exactly the same everywhere, just
think about interactions between you and your parents, you and your boss, you
and your closest friends, these are not fully interchangeable no matter who you
are and how you live your life. (See Irving Goffman's
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and George Herbert Mead's Mind,
Self and Society for some basics on this.)

Another problem with the service is that it is unclear what criteria people
use to approve others as "friends". I suspect many people approve most of those
who get in touch with them because it would be rude not to do so. Moreover, in
so far as people are trying to build a bigger network - which is probably not
the case for all users, but likely for many - it is to their advantage to create
additional "friendship" ties. But if these links are not very strong then a
second or third-level tie will be extremely weak and it is not clear how
beneficial it would be to anyone. How much can we trust these ties? An important
part of contacting people via acquaintances we share is a level of built-in
trust that comes from mutually knowing a third party. But if users link to
people they barely know and those people link to others they barely know then
the ties are going to get extremely weak and little trust will flow through them
wiping away one of the core ideas behind the entire enterprise.

A bigger network is not always a better network. If the criteria for creating
ties between members is too unclear or becomes too diluted (what exactly
constitutes a "friend" on Friendster?) then the ties become close to
meaningless. And although you can still map someone's path to you, there is no
longer much reason to trust them or feel much affiliation to them any more than
the person sitting next to you in a cafe.

The apparent rush to sign up on Friendster reminds me of the enthusiasm with
which people started participating in various online discussions in the 1990s.
People would post all sorts of information and comments not realizing that these
would be available to large audiences. Along came better search engine indexing
and now these less-than-flattering comments made about college flings and
annoying coworkers are available to colleagues and supervisors at the click of a
button. Similarly, it seems, people are flocking to Friendster to share all
sorts of information with networks larger than they can imagine only to realize
in time - or so I suspect - that they shared more than they may have wanted and
madetthemselves available to more people than necessarily ideal. I realize it is
probably possible to delete an account, but that often only occurs to people
once some damage has been done.

I do not mean to sound paranoid and I do not mean to suggest that everyone
has all sorts of ghosts in their closet. It is simply that everyone has
different social roles and mixing these too much indiscriminately may lead to
some complications.

Often shared affiliation with a group or organization will be more helpful
than being able to link to someone through even just two or three degrees of
connections. Anyone who has relied on alum ties can attest to this. The movie Legally
Blonde 2 presents a good example of this. The central character is able to
win the attention and support of an important political actor thanks to their
sorority ties identified via the rings they both wear.

Some schools have leveraged the importance of such ties quite well through
creating communities based on their alums. People in those groups may not know
each other but they share a group affiliation that may be important to many of
them. And although some may claim that such ties are elitist or irrelevant
because simply sharing an institutional affiliation won't make you best buddies
with someone (true), it would be hard to argue that even two or three degrees of
separation from a person via very tangential "friendship" ties has much larger
chances of mutual understanding and support.

Maybe they call it "six degrees of separation" for a
reason.

there seem to be so many sites and so many protocols. I think I will stay on LinkedIn and see what happens.

Theory of the Strength of Weak Ties, 1973