The Weakest Link
The Week Eight readings reminded me of something my friend told me this week.
My friend is a beautiful girl who really wants to meet a beautiful guy. I have to take my hat of to her because she’s extremely proactive in her pursuit of love. The other day she told me she’d met a new guy who was really great, but unfortunately he’s a good friend of one of her ex-boyfriends.
“Not again!” I said.
Yes, that’s right. This isn’t the first guy she’s dated who is friends with that particular ex-boyfriend.
My friend then said to me: “Maybe I’m stuck in the same circle, but how to I break free?”
I think I may have an answer for her.
Barabasi (2002) says ‘the weak ties, or acquaintances [in social grous], are our bridge to the outside world, since by frequenting different places they obtain their information from different sources than our immediate friends’ (p. 43).
Barabasi discusses how social networks can be quite generic, whereby a network of friends in which many people know each other makes it hard to break out into other networks. This is what Watts (2003) attributes to a ‘small world’. He says ‘the more your friends know each other, the less use they are to you in getting a message to someone you don’t know (p. 41). However, each person in a network will have acquaintances (weak ties) that don’t know each other, but have close social networks of their own, and this is a useful discovery in attempting to break free of your usual circle of friends (and also a way to stop dating your ex-boyfriend’s mates).
This is an interesting way to look at networking (and great advice for my soul mate seeking friend) in the contemporary media environment (the Internet), in particular when it comes to gaining employment, marketing a business, selling a product and so on. Although social networks are clusters of stronger links, the weak links that exist from these clusters to other clusters can connect very distant people, very easily. The Internet facilitates the practice of employing weaker links (Facebook, LinkedIn etc.) making the ability to connect with others easier than ever before.