Social Networking: A Brief Overview

Theory on social networking talks about the relationships in the society in terms of ties and nodes. Nodes are then explained as an individual actor within the networks while ties are referred to the relationship comprises the actors. Nodes can have different kinds of ties.

A social network in a simple way to describe it is a map of all ties that are interrelated between the involved nodes. The network itself can distinguish social capital of each actor. The concepts are often exhibited in the diagram of the social network wherein both nodes and ties are in the same line.

The figures of the social networks assist and distinguish usefulness of a certain network to the nodes. Lots of loose connections can create weak ties while the tighter and smaller the network connection can be more practical to its members. However, loose connections can have more ideas and opportunities rather than the tight networks where there are only few ideas and opportunities can be brought out. To be precise, a certain group in a closed networks share the same opinions and opportunities to each other.

It is essential for a certain individual to achieve several of network connections rather than with a single network connection. Likewise, these persons can influence or even act as a broker into their social network by just interconnecting the two points of two network connection. This is called the structural holes filing.

The thought that brought out from social networking is that having acquaintances in order to unite one person to some other globally. This concept generates the famous six degrees phrase removing after an experiment done by Stanley Milgram. On his experiment, individuals from US were questioned if they reach a target by sending a message on the long chin acquaintances. The result was there are about five or six different steps involving the length of successful chains. Academic writers, essayist like Judith Kleinfield are just one who continues to search for this phenomenon.