Strong vs Weak Ties

"Recently a presentation from the research lead for Google’s social team, Paul Adams, has been spreading around the web. The presentation provides deeper insight into Google’s existing concept of “social” and could help us further understand what the company believes is weaknesses in Facebook’s armor as they prepared to launch a “Facebook killer“. There were a number of themes that were consistent throughout the presentation, all of which we’ve included below.

The overall theme of the presentation was consistent: we have multiple groups and within those groups there are individuals who we have strong ties with and many more who we have weak ties with. There are also even temporary ties, like the person at the restaurant who served you food last night. While getting the system right on this is extremely difficult, the strong vs. weak ties is something that Facebook has yet to enable users to control.

Instead, the strength of relationships on Facebook is determined algorithmically: the more we interact (and/or view) a person on the site, the more likely they’ll show up in our news feed. So far the only way Facebook has been able to empower users to control access to information is through friends lists, a feature that even Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged is for “advanced” users of the site."

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