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The Ties that Bind Us:
Visualizing Relationships on Twitterand Social Networks
By Brian Solis, blogger at  PR 2.0  and principal of FutureWorksPR, Co- Author Putting the Public Back in Public Relationsand Now Is Gone
CreditBernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu of the Social ComputingLaboratory at HP Labs conducted an in-depth study of the relationships that power Twitter. The team recently released itsreport, "Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope."The abstract:Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as arepresentation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas,social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention andthe daily rhythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few thatmatter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connectionsunderlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.
 
The paper captures the definition of online relationships in the Social Web and why theyare inherently ambient and not intimate as opposed to those we maintain in the realworld. In life, we embrace those relationships that are mutually beneficial and notnecessarily one-sided.In social networks, however, many factors are present that impact the social graph aswell as the ebb and flow of information and ultimately dictate what becomes a toptrending topic, who garners relative authority, and also what goes viral.According to the report, "A link between any two people does not necessarily imply aninteraction between them. As we showed in the case of Twitter, most of the linksdeclared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view. Thus theneed to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on wordof mouth to spread an idea, a belief, or a trend."The intentions of Social Networks and Micro Communities (such as Twitter) weregenuine and innovative as they attempted to improve communication, sharing, andconnectivity between friends, family, associates. The new social economy also aspired
 
the building of bridges between the previously disconnected and interspersedrelationships that join friends of a friend (FOAF).What has evolved however, is so much more than the connection of friends and friendsof friends. Social Networks have created a parallel friend/follower archetype that injectsa homologous top-down network where individuals not only connect with those theyknow, but also with those who are interested in following their online activity, and notnecessarily with the expectation of reciprocation. This injects a new dynamic into onlinesocial relationships, one that facilitates and fosters a less personal, but still meaningfulengagement, creating an ambient, persona-audience interconnection.In an attempt to measure influence while revealing relationships on Twitter, BenediktKoehler developedTwitter Friends. Koehler's application is by far the most compelling and valuable analysis tool for measuring the @-crowd or "the relevant net," those peoplethat any given user converses with most often.He observes, "The number of people you follow on Twitter is not the whole truth. It’smore interesting [to see] who you are talking to whether you are following them or not. It[is] not a connection-based network but a performance-based network."
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