Complexity and Social Networks Blog

The interesting story here is, from my point of view, that such types of sites also seem to replicate the offline world. Hence that means that not only friendship can be mapped/observerved, but also the opposite side.

We all have people that we like more than others. Also, we might have contacts that we would consider as the "opposite of a friend" (i would not want to call them enemies here). Most often these people know it or feel when such type of "anti-friendship" is existing.

However, I would argue that - similar to the positive side - enemy relationships are much easier to build in the online world. Assigning someone enemy status is much easier done on the Internet than in the real life.

To cut a long story short, I think such types of sites are another contribution to mapping our offline world in the online world of social networking.

You point, it seems to me, to some main questions, as we work to get a conceptual grasp. My inclination would be as follows:

To what extent do online innovations simply mirror existing physical world relationships? For instance, one thread over past months suggests that social networking sites serve existing, rather than new, social groups.

Which leads to the counter question - so what, if anything, new does online activity inject into social relations? Again for instance, 'business contact' sites, it has been argued, facilitate finding that next commercial link, beyond what would otherwise be possible. Or, here you are suggesting, online gives rise to 'quicker' friendship, or enmity. That naturally brings the question, so are these also more ephemeral?

And so forth.

A challenging - and interesting, and enjyable - quest, to understand.

David

Did anyone see that techcrunch did a story about vois? Go check it out http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/09/vois-an-otc-listed-social-network/#comment-1746686

Before adding a social network to their IT operations, CIOs had better check the fine print to find out what the service plans to do with the company’s user information: http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,2209755,00.asp

I guess it's also possible to look at web social networks as amplifiers of the real social networking. I mean you extend your real friendship to virtual plane, and similarly the opposite. So you add you real friend to your online social network to emphasise how you like them, also you add your enemies to show how much you dislike them. In that case online social network becomes a tool to inflict some badness upon your "enemies".
This is only one view to online social networks, but I guess it might explain why people do things like that.