KU Researcher Explores Interpersonal Communications in the Age of Facebook

Interesting...

Nancy Baym, (University of Kansas) associate professor of communication studies, became interested early on in how the Internet shapes interpersonal communication and of late has focused her research on social networking sites in particular.

Sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have revolutionized interpersonal relationships for the digital age, she said. Within these online communities, users share status updates, self-generated media, journal entries and other interpersonal communication with an ever-growing cadre of online friends. The purpose is to reinforce established friendships and form bonds with new friends.

“They start in the mid-late 1990s based on this idea that Stanley Milgram had that everybody’s connected by six degrees of separation — and the first one was actually called ‘sixdegrees.com,’ ” said Baym. “And they’re based on the premise that you’re more likely to want to get to know people who know people you already know than all-out strangers. So rather than a dating site that just has people putting up profiles and trying to randomly match, what if you could put up profiles of people that had shared friends. Wouldn’t those be more likely to succeed?”
[...]
“Different people have different reasons for compulsive Facebook use,” Baym said. “But I think it comes down to the fact that there’s a continuous dribble — there’s always something new — so every time you go something has changed; somebody has updated their status; someone has sent you a request; someone has posted an item. So it’s a continuous link of hanging out in the halls with your friends between classes or hanging around the water cooler at the office.”

Baym recently has completed research on Last.fm, a niche site that connects fans of similar music. She found that online friendships based on common taste in music tended to be more fragile, although people also used the site to maintain closer relationships.

“What I found on Last.fm was that on average these relationships are not very strong,” said the KU researcher.

More here.

Some Good Advice for Online Networking

Do you use LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or any of the myriad online social networking sites out there? Here's some advice on doing it right. Hat tip to HairPro at the very impressive Kansas City Online Community for pointing out Rebecca Beasley's good tips on social networking.

Here's an excerpt:

If you try to use social networks by just signing up and sending bulletins and emails to people, you’re missing the point entirely. If you don’t have a profile that’s the first thing people notice. You’ve already ruined your credibility and made yourself look like a scammer. Anyone who doesn’t take the time to at least set up a simple bio page has nothing to present. Even if you add friends, what are they going to see? No one wants to do business with someone they don’t know. To them you’re like a stranger lurking in the shadows with no real identity. You also want to have a nice picture of yourself so they will see it when your activity comes up in the search engine of the site. If you don’t have a picture people see you as the default no pic blank photo and this makes you look like you’re not professional or trustworthy.

The whole posting is here. Give it a click.

The Sauce

Good face-to-face networking in the Kansas City area may be found at the Greater KC Chamber of Commerce's Business After Hours. Click here for details on the next one!

And if you need assistance in making your social networking site sing, let me know.