16-01-2013, 12:53 PM
PREDICTING TIE STRENGTH WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
INTRODUCTION
Relationships make social media social. Yet, different relationships
play different roles. Consider the recent practice
of substituting social media friends for traditional job references.
As one hiring manager remarked, by using social
media “you’ve opened up your rolodex for the whole world
to see” [38]. To the dismay of applicants, employers sometimes
cold call social media friends expecting a job reference
“only to find that you were just drinking buddies.”
Although clearly not the norm, the story illustrates a basic
fact: not all relationships are created equal.
For decades, social science has made much the same case,
documenting how different types of relationships impact
individuals and organizations [16]. In this line of research,
relationships are measured in the currency of tie strength
[17]. Loose acquaintances, known as weak ties, can help a
friend generate creative ideas [4] or find a job [18]. They
also expedite the transfer of knowledge across workgroups
[20]. Trusted friends and family, called strong ties, can affect
emotional health [36] and often join together to lead
organizations through times of crisis [24]. Despite many
compelling findings along this line of research, social media
does not incorporate tie strength or its lessons. Instead,
all users are the same: friend or stranger, with little or nothing
in between. Most empirical work examining large-scale
social phenomena follows suit. A link between actors either
exists or not, with the relationship having few properties of
its own [1, 2, 27].
TIE STRENGTH
Mark Granovetter introduced the concept of tie strength in
his landmark 1973 paper “The Strength of Weak Ties” [17].
In this section we review tie strength and the substantial
line of research into its characteristics. We then discuss four
researchers’ proposals for the dimensions of tie strength,
laying a foundation for our treatment of it as a predictable
quantity. The section concludes by introducing the research
questions that guide the rest of this paper.
Definition and Impact
The strength of a tie is a (probably linear) combination of the
amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual
confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the
tie. [17]
While Granovetter left the precise definition of tie strength
to future work, he did characterize two types of ties, strong
and weak. Strong ties are the people you really trust, people
whose social circles tightly overlap with your own. Often,
they are also the people most like you. The young, the
highly educated and the metropolitan tend to have diverse
networks of strong ties [31]. Weak ties, conversely, are
merely acquaintances. Weak ties often provide access to
novel information, information not circulating in the closely
knit network of strong ties.
The Dimensions of Tie Strength
At what point is a tie to be considered weak? This is not simply
a question for the methodologically curious…the theory
makes a curvilinear prediction. How do we know where we
are on this theoretical curve? Do all four indicators count
equally toward tie strength? [23]
Granovetter proposed four tie strength dimensions: amount
of time, intimacy, intensity and reciprocal services. Subsequent
research has expanded the list. Ronald Burt proposed
that structural factors shape tie strength, factors like network
topology and informal social circles [5]. Wellman and
Wortley argue that providing emotional support, such as
offering advice on family problems, indicates a stronger tie
[40]. Nan Lin, et al., show that social distance, embodied by
factors such as socioeconomic status, education level, political
affiliation, race and gender, influences tie strength
[29].