directed Blog post 2

Definition of social network:

social network service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities  (Ellison, Nicole 2007)

With this definition we see that social networks are supposed to build our relationships. Is social networking serving its purpose? On an average a facebook user has 300 friends (Stefanone, et al., 2008), with this statistic being 3 years old the average may have gone up tremendously since then. With this many friends are we able to be interpersonal with all of this, or possibly build a relationship completely based from an online relationship?

In the article “The value of online friends” users were put into an experiment to test user’s relationships that were considered “strong” relationships, (already developed outside of social networking, face-to-face), and weak relationships, (people never met face-to-face). The experiment showed that relationships already developed were more likely to respond and build through facebook, while online based relationships were less likely to respond. Even then, relationships that were newly developing offline were likely to strengthen with help from a online source such as Facebook. Therefore, Facebook is more likely to be used to keep in touch with old friends and help strengthen relationships with new friends.

So to answer our question, yes and no. Yes, social networking can build our relationships that were previous build from face-to-face interaction. This is being said, facebook is not all bad, it may serve the purpose of simply serving to our existing relationship, but in no means should it be our sole interaction with one another. This study showed me how real interaction is so important, because without that initial relationship there is barely anything to base off of online. Social networking should be used to keep up with old buds, and get to know new buds, but not to actually meet friends through the computer screen.