FreshNetworks Blog

Social networks online are fundamentally different to our offline social networks – our friends, acquaintances, colleagues and others. Offline we have distinct groups of people that we interact with in different ways, whereas online in social networks we tend to merge all of our friends into one main pool.

This great presentation from Paul Adams, head of user experience at Google, looks at how we interact offline and online and takes a sociological approach to understanding how people interact in social networks and the consequences of this. From the dangers of two groups of friends colliding to the challenges for brands in social networks, this is a great presentation and our Required Reading at FreshNetworks this week. The presentation has a lot of detail in and is worth a good look through and although these are his own findings I know from my experience studying this area that there are a lot of research papers to back up his results.

There are a few points that I think are key take always for companies looking to use social networks:

1. Social Networks are not always the best places for brands to interact. Social networks are very user centric places. All the diagrams that are in Paul Adam’s research are cantered around the user it is about their connections, their friends, their family, their swimming group etc. because of the size of the audience on social networks there is a tendency for brands to go into them and want to tell everyone about their products and services, some brands can work very well in social networks but most of the time people don’t want to be interrupted in what they are doing and there are more beneficial ways to engage.
2. The power of weak ties is decreasing. Paul Adams talks about tie strength which is based on sociological theory (see the work on Mark Granovetter on “The Strength of Weak Ties”) this theory explains the links between people in different social circles. Strong ties are the links that you have with friends and family and are thought to be most influential when a recommendation is needed. Weak ties are links that you have with people that you have an affinity to but are not in regular contact. Weak ties are important to bridge the gap between different social circles and for getting information disseminated throughout different groups on the internet. People naturally build a large network of these weak ties and the process of identifying influencers who are willing to share opinions is becoming more and more important. It’s not who you know in your network it’s how likely they are to speak about your company and be trusted.
3. People have different personalities in different areas. Everyone acts differently in different social groupings and when they are hanging out with their mates they might want to be associated with a bar or a beer or certain places but they might not want their family or co-workers knowing.

Social networks yield a high reward if companies can engage people but are a hard place for brands to get it right and are just one part of social media.