Sunday, April 22, 2007
friendship strength
i have been trying to decide what would be the best way to measure the strength of online friendships. frequency of messaging or posting? its obvious that some friendships are stronger then others....but what can you really say about friendship strength from frequency of communication. i probably talk to some people more then i do my best friends but im not really sure that says anything. in online communities friendship strength would help to determine the balance of strong and weak connections in the network. is this balance the same in FtF communities?
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2 comments:
This is an interesting question. It's interesting that people probably make judgements about the level of freindships due to how often they post on someones wall and all that. I talk with some of my better freinds over the internet very rarely...
I think that before attempting to devise a metric for measuring online friendships, we first have to think about how exactly to measure the strength of face-to-face friendships. I'm not convinced there are more accurate ways than simply asking people to gauge their own friendships.
I can't think of any indicators that would even be reasonably accurate....
Time spent together? What about good friends across the country?
Time spent communicating? What about friends who know each other on a profound level and don't really feel the need to keep track of minor developments in each other's lives?
I don't know. I'm pretty skeptical of things like Facebook walls and AIM as accurate measurements of strength of friendships. Interested in more of your thoughts.
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