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BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004 71
Public displays of connection
J Donath and d boyd
Participants in social network sites create self-descriptive profiles that include their links to other members, creating a visible network of
connections — the ostensible purpose of these sites is to use this network to make friends, dates, and business connections. In this paper
we explore the social implications of the public display of one’s social network. Why do people display their social connections in everyday
life, and why do they do so in these networking sites? What do people learn about another’s identity through the signal of network
display? How does this display facilitate connections, and how does it change the costs and benefits of making and brokering such
connections compared to traditional means? The paper includes several design recommendations for future networking sites.
1. Introduction
‘Orkut [1] is an on-line community that connects people
through a network of trusted friends’
‘Find the people you need through the people you trust’
— LinkedIn [2].
‘Access people you want to reach through people you
know and trust. Spoke Network helps you cultivate a
strong personal network by keeping you in touch with
your relationships’ — Spoke [3].
‘Friendster Beta [4]: The new way to meet people.
Friendster is an on-line community that connects people
through networks of friends for dating or making new
friends’.
Social networking sites, in which participants create a self-
descriptive profile and make links to other members, have
recently become quite popular. ‘Networking’ is the ostensible
purpose of these sites — using one’s chain of connections to
make new friends, dates, business partners, etc. Underlying all
the networking sites are a core set of assumptions — that
there is a need for people to make more connections, that
using a network of existing connections is the best way to do
so, and that making this easy to do is a great benefit.
The first dedicated on-line networking site was sixdegrees.com,
which, like today’s social networking sites, helped people
connect to an extended network of friends of friends and
beyond. Sixdegrees.com folded after four years in operation.
Since then, use of the Internet has greatly expanded and today
it is much more likely that one’s friends and the people one
would like to befriend are present in cyberspace. People are
accustomed to thinking of the on-line world as a social space.
Today, networking sites are suddenly extremely popular.
Social networks — our connections with other people — have
many important functions. They are sources of emotional and
financial support, and of information about jobs, other people,
and the world at large. The types of social networks that
develop in different communities have a profound effect on
the way people work, the opportunities they have, and the
structure of their daily life [5, 6]. There are societies in which
network ties reflect a rigid hierarchy and close kinship
relationships, and others in which they reflect a mobile culture
structured around work and school. Today, we are seeing the
advent of social networks formed in cyberspace. People meet
in on-line forums and through on-line dating services; they
keep in touch with an unprecedentedly large number of people
via electronic media.
In today’s society, access to information is a key element of
status and power and communication is instant, ubiquitous
and mobile. The social networking sites we will be discussing
in this paper are a product of this emerging culture. They
people are accustomed to
thinking of the on-line world
as a social space
Public displays of connection
BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004
72
function both as environments in which these new ties are
formed and as depictions of these networks in the display of
individual connections.
Social networking sites are on-line environments in which
people create a self-descriptive profile and then make links to
other people they know on the site, creating a network of
personal connections. Participants in social networking sites
are usually identified by their real names and often include
photographs; their network of connections is displayed as an
integral piece of their self-presentation.
The public display of connections is one of the most salient
features of the social sites. The focus of this paper is on the
social implications of this display. Why do people display their
social connections in everyday life — and why do they do so in
these networking sites? What do people learn about another’s
identity through the signal of network display? How does this
display facilitate connections, and how does it change the
costs and benefits of making and brokering such connections
as opposed to doing so via traditional means?
The profile and network of links are the fundamental features
of these sites, but the specific instantiation varies from site to
site. The examples and observations in this paper are drawn
from several contemporary services, including Friendster [4],
Orkut [1], Tribe.net [7], Ryze [8] and LinkedIn [2]. These sites
undergo frequent redesign and new ones appear often; thus,
while we have grounded our analysis on observation [9], we try
to speak generally about approaches to design.
Most networking sites share a similar model of interpersonal
links — they are mutual, public, unnuanced, and
decontextualised:
•links are mutual: if A shows B as a connection, then B has
also agreed to show A as a connection,
•the links are public: they are permanently on display for
others to see — here, the sites do differ, e.g. LinkedIn
allows you to see only the connections made by your
immediate links, and only if they allow it, whereas Orkut
allows users to explore freely, and others limit network
viewings to a still more broad class of friends of friends of
friends,
•the links are unnuanced: there is no distinction made
between a close relative and a near stranger one chatted
with idly on-line one night,
•the links are decontextualised: there is no way of showing
only a portion of one’s network to some people — some
sites do allow users to adjust the closeness by degree of
the people who are to be allowed to see their
connections, and within that degree everyone can see all
connections (there is no ability to segregate one’s links),
and similarly for one’s profile, and a few sites allow
limiting parts of the profile to closer connections, but
again connection degree is the only distinction made.
The features of the links in the displays of connection — that
are public, mutual, unnuanced, and decontextualised —
shape the culture that is evolving on these sites.
2. What does the display of connections
mean?
In the physical world, people display their connections in many
ways. They have parties in which they introduce friends who
they think would like — or impress — each other [10, 11].
They drop the names of high status acquaintances casually in
their conversation. They decorate their refrigerator with
photos. Simply appearing in public with one’s acquaintances is
a display of connection. These displays serve various
purposes. The high status name-dropping may be a deliberate
ploy to impress the listener of the speaker’s importance or
ability to effect some action. The refrigerator display may be
prompted by the good feeling engendered by memories of
pleasant times with friends [12]. The introductions may be
done as a favour, as a way of gaining social capital, or as a way
of uniting compatible but disconnected circles [10].
Seeing someone within the context of their connections
provides the viewer with information about them. Social
status, political beliefs, musical taste, etc, may be inferred
from the company one keeps. Furthermore, knowing that
someone is connected to people one already knows and trusts
is one of the most basic ways of establishing trust with a new
relationship [13, 14]. The reliability of the inferences drawn
from these displays varies. The social climber who is
continuously dropping the names of famous friends may be
taking advantage of the listener’s inability to verify the stories
to create an impressive but imaginary resumé. An intimate
dinner party in which the guests are clearly familiar with the
host tells much more about the host’s social circle than does a
giant loft party where the attendees are only vaguely aware of
the evening’s provenance. The friends depicted in photos on
the refrigerator are likely to be just that — but there does exist
a market in faux family photos and other material meant to
create the impression of aspired to life and history [15]. How
important is the reliability of the information gleaned from the
display of connections depends on what one is planning to do
with it. If one is simply being entertained by a celebrity-laced
story, suspension of disbelief is harmless. Yet, if one is being
recruited for an investment scheme the desirability of which is
based on claims of association with the rich and famous, a
deeper analysis would be sensible.
A useful way of analysing the reliability of displays of
connections is to think of them in the framework of signalling
theory. This theory, developed in both biology [16—18] and
economics [19, 20], describes the relationship between a
signal and the underlying quality it represents. Most of the
qualities we are interested in about other people — Is this
person nice? Trustworthy? Can she do this job? Can he be
relied on in an emergency? Would she be a good parent? —
are not directly observable. Instead, we rely on signals, which
are more or less reliably correlated with an underlying quality.
social status, political
beliefs, musical taste, etc,
may be inferred from the
company one keeps
Public displays of connection
BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004 73
Some signals, often termed honest or assessment signals are
inherently reliable because they are costly in terms of the
quality they are signalling [18]. For example, a fast and
energetic gazelle will exhibit a behaviour called ‘stotting’ when
it sees a predator. Instead of running off, it jumps up and
down in place, expending a lot of energy and wasting time.
This is a reliable signal of its great speed, for a slower animal
could not afford to do this and still outrun the predator.
Sometimes, the expense of producing and/or assessing a
costly signal is too high, and a less costly but also less reliable
signal is used [16]. Such signals are often called conventional
signals, because the connection between signal and quality
exists by convention rather than necessity. For example,
driving an expensive car is a signal of wealth, for to own such a
car is quite costly in the domain being signalled, in this case
money. Yet a car can be rented and thus a person who is
unable to afford to buy a late model Jaguar may still be able to
drive one around for a few days. If, however, we add the cost
of time for extensive observation, we can increase the
reliability of the signal. Seeing someone driving the Jaguar
month after month is a more reliable signal of their ownership
of it than is a single sighting. If one is only casually interested
in the financial status of the driver, a long term investment of
time in observing them is unnecessary and undesirable and
one is likely to be satisfied with the possibly unreliable
information gleaned from the less costly signal of a single
observation. If the costs of being mistaken are high, then it is
worthwhile to invest in the cost of the assessment signal,
which in this case is the monetary investment of the driver and
the temporal investment of both driver and observer.
There is another important source of costs in determining the
reliability of a signal and that is reputation and the ability of
receivers to punish deceivers. In a system where interactions
are not repeated and there is no communication within a
community, receivers must rely on the signal alone. Yet in a
situation in which there is persistent identity and repeated
interaction, receivers can punish deceivers through the social
mechanism of reputation. Here, the information gleaned
through experience by an individual can spread through a
community. The deceptive signaller then pays a cost in terms
of difficulty in finding future interaction partners, etc. This is
an important concept in evaluating social networking displays,
for they place the individual within a social context that fosters
co-operation through the structure of reputation
maintenance.
Signalling theory focuses our analysis of the displays of
connection in social networking sites on questions such as:
What are the qualities that are being represented by the signal
of the network display? What are the costs of producing these
displays? What are the benefits that can come from them?
What are the receivers attempting to discern? What are the
costs they will bear if the signal is deceptive? It also focuses
our attention on the signalling value of the network itself —
what are the implications of an articulated social network, that
is, a network in which the connections are explicitly depicted,
in terms of reputation and the costs that a deceived receiver
can impart?
3. Displaying connections to verify personal
identity and ensure co-operation
A public display of connections is an implicit verification of
identity. In order to understand the significance of this, we
start by briefly discussing how widespread less reliable identity
representations are in the on-line world. We then discuss two
predictions that can be made about the effect of a public
display of connections. First, since one’s connections are
linked to one’s profile, which they have presumably viewed
and implicitly verified, it should ensure honest self-
presentation. Secondly, since the display makes one’s
connections and the means of contacting them public, it
should ensure co-operative behaviour by putting one’s
reputation on the line with all transactions, for an unhappy
date or client, etc, can easily contact the connections. The
section concludes with a discussion of displays of connection
and identity theft.
3.1 Verifying personal identity
Identity deception is prevalent in the on-line world. In the real
world the body anchors identity, making it both singular and
difficult to change. Identity deception, though not unheard of,
is difficult — convincingly representing oneself as a member of
the opposite gender is quite costly, requiring extensive
makeup, costuming, and possibly surgery, while portraying
oneself as a different person requires acquiring another’s
documents, avoiding known acquaintances, and risking a
lengthy incarceration. On-line, identity is mutable and
unanchored by the body that is its locus in the real world [21].
In many situations, creating pseudonyms has little cost and if
one ruins the on-line reputation tied to one screen name, it is
simple to acquire a new name and return afresh [22]. Behind
the new name is the same problematic person, but the
equivalence between the disreputable old name and the clean
new name — the fact that they are both names for the same
person — is invisible.
In some situations, such as game playing, the ease of creating
imaginary personas and unsullied pseudonyms is acceptable.
But for many purposes, such as providing support, exchanging
goods and services, finding friends and seeking employees, it
is not. Here, the cost of being deceived can be quite high, and
it is worthwhile for people to assume and demand greater
costs in order to be more confident in their belief in the other’s
identity.
A public display of connections can be viewed as a signal of the
reliability of one’s identity claims. If I write a description of
myself for strangers to read, it is easy to prevaricate. Yet if I
take that description and ask a number of people who know
me to link to it and implicitly vet it, this should increase the
reliability of the description. In theory, the public display of
connections found on networking sites should ensure honest
self-presentation because one’s connections are linked to
the reliability of social
connections can be
analysed in terms of
signalling theory
Public displays of connection
BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004
74
one’s profile; they have both seen it and, implicitly, sanctioned
it.
A comparison of identity presentation in contexts with and
without social networks can be made by comparing social
networking sites and dating sites. Both are used to find dates
and both feature self-written profiles. They differ in that the
dating sites are pseudonymous and have no display of
connection while the network sites feature real names and
displays of connection. Dating sites are thriving, with millions
of users reportedly every month [23]. Yet there have also been
numerous reports of identity deception in such sites, ranging
from the relatively innocuous misrepresentation of personal
appearance and achievements, to more serious deceptions
about marital status and intentions. The costs of creating a
deceptive dating site profile are relatively low and are often
not in the domain being advertised. For example, stating ‘I am
a kind, thoughtful and romantic person’ does not impose any
costs on one’s kindness or romantic nature and requires little
thought. Social networking sites should be more reliable. The
use of one’s real name and the network both imply that if one
were to prevaricate extensively in one’s profile, real
acquaintances would see this and presumably, make some
rebuke — or at least, one would be embarrassed to be seen
exaggerating accomplishments in front of one’s friends. More
serious deceptions, such as a married person posing as an
available single, are far more difficult to perform in a
networking site. In order to remain innocent in the eyes of
one’s friends and family one would need to create a new
persona and then surround oneself with invented friends and
very weak ties or would need to appear as acutely alone.
Appearing on a networking site with a full network of
acquaintances is a relatively reliable signal that one’s
participation on the site is within the boundaries of acceptable
behaviour within that network.
Does this mean that the display of connections on social
networking sites makes the presentation of identity in these
environments very reliable? If the connections listed on the
profile were always a) real people who b) knew the subject and
c) would impose sanctions on false self-portrayals, then yes,
these sites would be quite reliable. Yet these assumptions do
not always hold.
•Real people
It is possible that the connections listed are not real
people. There is often little or no verification of people
when they sign up to join most networking sites. It is easy
to create a false persona; the costs lie in building the
network. The determined deceiver can create a series of
false profiles and have them link to each other, creating
the illusion of a network of well-connected participants.
The cost here is the effort required to create these
multiple personas. This cost is dependent on the
registration requirements of the site and sites that make
registration more difficult raise the cost and lower the
likelihood of such deception. Today, most sites are free.
Some require an invitation from an existing member, but
it would be possible simply to invite the made-up profiles
oneself. A site that requires an invitation from an existing
member AND that keeps the host member’s name on the
invitee’s profile (which is seldom if ever done today)
would make the cost of creating a circle of deception
higher, by making it possible to trace the chain of links to
a real person. While such elaborate deceptions are rare, if
the benefits of creating a believable but false persona are
high enough, it is likely that they will occur. Sites that
value their own reputation as a place where people can
find trustworthy others should be cognisant of the value
of registration costs and of maintaining invitation chains.
•Who knew the subject
It is possible that the connections are real people, but
that they do not know the subject. The culture of the
networking sites varies. In some, it is common for
strangers to happen upon an interesting profile, and
contact the person requesting a connection; in others, it
is common for people to link only to others they do know.
Linking to externally unknown people became so
common on Friendster that the phrase ‘she’s not my
friend, she’s my friendster’ [9] arose to explain the
relationship one has with a person known only through
that site. This is not inherently bad — after all, the social
sites are designed to help people meet and linking to one
another is the obvious action to take upon introduction in
this environment. The drawback is that this ease of
meeting means that the degree of acquaintanceship
signified by a link may be very minimal. If the people on
someone’s display of connections do not know the
subject in real life, they have no way to verify the profile
— they, like the receiver, know only the on-line
presentation and thus they do not add new information.
One cost here is that it can take more effort to get
strangers to agree to link to you than real friends; friends,
upon receiving the link request, are likely to say yes (the
cost of establishing the relationship has already been
paid) whereas a stranger is more likely to refuse such
requests. What would make someone agree to link to a
complete stranger? One possibility is that they simply
want more links — perhaps they are a newcomer to the
site and feel conspicuous in the small size of their
network or they may be one of the participants who is
seeking to build as large a network as they can. Another
possibility is that the link seeker has created a particularly
intriguing profile and people agree to link to it — or even
seek out links with it — because it is so well crafted or
features an aesthetic or political viewpoint they wish to
espouse. By paying the cost of carefully crafting an
interesting profile one can make more connections. Here
we see how the various meanings of a link can be
conflated by different participants — a link may be made
in response to appreciation of a witty entry, and yet be
interpreted as meaning that the linked people know each
other.
Furthermore, a connection may know the subject, but not
all aspects of his or her personality, work history, etc.
Relationships are contextual — a friend known as a
supportive shoulder to lean on may not be recognisable
as the ruthless poker player or somewhat lax manager he
or she also is. Identity is faceted [24]; we have different
interests, beliefs, traits, etc, and share different ones with
different people. Feld’s [10] formulation of how networks
form uses the word ‘focus’ to encompass the different
Public displays of connection
BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004 75
situations, people, ideas, etc, that bring people together.
These foci, he pointed out, organise the structure of
social networks because they are the circumstances and
reasons people meet each other and form ties with each
other. The type of information that flows through a tie,
whether about the person or about the world at large,
depends on the focus that brought them together and on
the shared facets of their identity.
The subject’s profile may touch upon various facets of his
or her identity, and those who are displayed as links may
know only some of these. Other claims in the profile may
be untrue, yet unquestioned by friends and colleagues,
who may simply assume this is an aspect of their
acquaintance about which they do not know.
LinkedIn has developed an interesting approach to
recognising the focused natured of people’s connections.
Like several other sites, it includes testimonials, which
are comments people write about the subject and which
appear alongside the profile and display of connections
(see Fig 1 for a sample User Profile page). Unlike links,
these need not be reciprocal. They are almost invariably
complimentary, since they are displayed at the discretion
of the subject (though notions of what is complimentary
is quite context dependent). On LinkedIn, these
testimonials are situated in specific sections of the
profile, rather than as general comments. This is a
professional site, aimed at business connections, so the
profile sections correspond to different jobs; the
testimonials speak about the work the subject did at each
work place. The endorsement of one aspect of the profile
does not imply any knowledge about the rest. As we will
discuss later in this paper, there are a number of reasons
for making a self-presentation more faceted; these
situated testimonials are a step in that direction.
•Who would impose sanctions
Finally, it is possible that the connections are real people,
and they know the subject and know that the profile is
deceptive, but they do not care. The culture of the
networking sites varies. Some are more playful and
participants may see them as an environment for
performative expression. On Orkut, a law professor lists
his career skills as ‘small appliance repair’, his career
interests as ‘large appliance repair’. To those who know
him, the joke is obvious. Presented on a site where
people often creatively embellish their profiles we can see
it not as a deceptive self-description, but as a signal of
the author’s dry humour1. Other sites, such as LinkedIn,
are quite business-like and emphasise one’s personal
responsibility in vouching for another person. Here, a
clearly deceptive statement, such as claiming a higher
title at a previous job than was actually held, might
indeed be challenged.
3.2 Ensuring co-operation
Yet confrontation is difficult. It is easier to ignore such actions,
especially when acting as an individual. But social groups have
Fig 1 Sample LinkedIn user profile page.
1 In fact, Orkut features the category ‘sense of humour’ as a line in
everyone’s main profile, with the multiple choice answers including
‘obscure’, ‘clever/quick witted’, ‘raunchy’, etc. Note that this
description of one’s humour is a conventional signal, with no cost in
that domain. Creative and funny use of the profile, however, is a much
more reliable signal of one’s wit, even as it becomes a less reliable
description at face value.
Public displays of connection
BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004
76
considerable power in enforcing norms. The power of
reputation to enforce co-operative behaviour lies not in
confrontation with the subject, but in conversation
surrounding him.
Displaying connections is a way of signalling a willingness to
risk one’s reputation. In the real world, as Burt [13] has
pointed out, reputation is a powerful force in groups with
dense affiliations. This can be due to repeated interactions —
we gather a reputation around our identity that, if good, is
quite valuable and we benefit from continuing to act in ways
that enhance that reputation. But it can also be due to having
mutual acquaintances — he cites Granovetter who says that
the ‘mortification’ at having mutual friends discover one’s
poor behaviour towards another friend is ‘unbearable’ [25]. A
public display of connections, listed along with contact
information, arguably provides all viewers of one’s network
site profile with a virtual set of mutual acquaintances.
In the pseudonymous dating scene, a frequent complaint is
that people act rudely towards each other in ways that they
would not do to people they knew in a more integrated social
environment. A common complaint concerns dates who break
off communication with no explanation, as well as dates who
behave boorishly in person. By publicly displaying
connections, one provides others with a means of getting in
touch with one’s circle of friends and acquaintances. One is
less likely to treat a date rudely when they are equipped with
contact information for many of one’s friends. Similarly, poor
behaviour is a problem in many on-line discussion forums,
where pseudonymity and disconnection provide cover for
angry or malicious postings. Several of the social networking
sites, such as Orkut and Tribe.net, include user created
discussion forums. Here, the participants can be seen in the
context of their on-line social network, a context that provides
accountability.
The cost of this accountability is a reduction in privacy. The
pseudonymous dating sites give people at least the illusion
that none of their friends need know how much they would like
to find a mate; the pseudonymous forums allow people to
express opinions or ask questions on topics that they prefer
their acquaintances not know. In the social networking sites,
one acts in the company of friends and acquaintances. The
security of the named and networked systems comes at the
cost of reduced privacy.
The value of the display of connections for ensuring co-
operation depends upon the type of connection they
represent. If they are vague acquaintances, people known only
in the context of the virtual world, there may be little
repercussion for poor behaviour, even if the victim complains
to the subject’s list of contacts. Still, for many people, having
bad things said about them, even to distant acquaintances,
would be painful and embarrassing. Knowing that everyone
they interact with knows of and can communicate with a group
of their acquaintances can influence their behaviour. The
public display of connections places them in a still virtual, but
now public, space.
3.3 Identity theft
The public display of connections can help verify that you are
who you say you are. But it can also help someone else
establish that they are you, too.
In the face-to-face world, people signal status and seek
common ground by selectively divulging information about
their own social network.
Name dropping is used to position oneself in a status
hierarchy. People may claim connections to celebrities or
other high-status people to raise their own status. Here, the
goal is not to seek mutual acquaintances but to impress. Such
claims to the proximity of fame are often questionable, for
once the signaller ascertains that the receiver does not know
the famous person he may feel free to make stronger claims of
friendship, weaving them with unverifiable yet convincing
details.
Name display is also used to discover whether there is a
common bond between new acquaintances. People who lived
in the same city or attended the same school may go through
long lists of names seeking common ground. They find cues
about the other’s social position in both the lack and presence
of mutual acquaintances. There is seldom a question of the
veracity of the friendship claims to non-celebrities. If you do
not know them, then my claim of friendship with them is
meaningless to you and if you do know them, you will be able
to easily discover that my claim is false.
Both of these displays of social connection rely on the premise
that one’s social network is, while not secret, not public either.
John Guare’s play ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ [26], based on
the true story of David Hampton [27], is about the power of
name-dropping and deceptive display of social network
information. The central character is an imposter, Paul, who
manoeuvres his way into the lives of several wealthy families
with the claim of a close connection to a very famous celebrity
and by displaying detailed social network information about
their children. Paul says he is the illegitimate son of Sidney
Poitier. His listeners cannot directly corroborate or disprove
his claim and they end up believing it both because of the
wealth of details he supplies, all of which he was able to find in
public documents, but also because of their own desire to
believe it and to thus have this connection with fame. He
becomes even more deeply enmeshed in their lives by saying
that he attends Harvard with their children. He know all their
children’s names and information about them, and he also
knows their children’s friends and where they live and what
they do; this is what gives him the greatest credibility. It turns
out that he had acquired the address book of Trent, a friend of
one of the children and had used this normally private
information to weave a convincing but deceptive display of
what he claimed to be his own network.
a public display of con-
nections can help someone
else establish that they are
you
Public displays of connection
BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004 77
Trent had fallen in love with Paul and was coaching him on
upper class manners, and offered to provide him with
information about all the people in the address book:
Trent: ‘I don’t want you to leave me, Paul. I’ll go
through my address book and tell you about family after
family. You’ll never not fit in again. We’ll give you a new
identity. I’ll make you the most eagerly sought after
young man in the East....
Trent: Paul stayed with me for three months. We went
through the address book letter by letter. Paul vanished
by the L’s. He took the address book with him ...’
‘Six Degrees of Separation’ shows the power of social network
display. Paul’s knowledge of each person was minimal, but he
was able to weave a convincing portrait of himself as a
member of the group with a few well-chosen details about
each.
Participants in social networking sites make this sort of
information about their personal social world publicly available
— an extensive list of their friends, with a wealth of detail
about each individual. Perhaps one day if social network
displays become ubiquitous, the signalling value of detailed
social network information will decline. But that decline will
only occur because the signal loses value through repeated
deceptive use. In the meantime, users of on-line social
network systems should be aware of the value of the data they
are making available on-line — and of the ways that it can
potentially be used.
4. Forming connections and combining
contexts
The main point of social networking sites is to help people
make new connections. Underlying their model is the
assumption that having a mutual acquaintance, or even just
being connected via a chain of acquaintances, provides
context for connecting.
This is born out in our everyday experience. When people
meet, they often attempt to establish mutual acquaintances:
‘Oh, you were in Colorado in 1997? Did you know so-and-so?’
Finding a mutual acquaintance establishes common ground —
to whatever extent knowing that person defines a certain set
of beliefs and interests, mutual acquaintanceship establishes
that both people share some of these. Claiming to have close
ties with the person makes it likely that many things are
shared, disavowing close ties also provides key contextual
information: ‘Yes, but not well. He was part of that weird
astro-therapy scene.’
4.1 Forming connections around foci of interest
People can meet randomly in all kinds of ways. But to turn an
encounter into a connection, there generally must be some
common ground. Feld [10] used the term focus to refer to the
situations, interests, and individuals, etc, that bring people
together and shape the dynamics of network formation.
Connections between people, he said, are often, but not
exclusively, made through these foci. He characterised foci in
terms of how constraining they are. People who share a highly
constraining focus, such as being in the same close-knit
family, interact with each other frequently and are all tied to
each other. People who share a lightly constraining focus, such
as living in the same urban neighbourhood, may have only a
slightly higher chance of interacting with and being tied to
others with that focus. People form ties when they share a
focus; the more constraining the focus and/or the greater
number of foci they share, the more likely it is that they will
form a tie.
A person can be a focus — people who host regular get-
togethers of their various friends function this way. People on
social networking sites are foci, bringing people together in a
common list. Being on such a list is very lightly constraining;
like sharing a neighbourhood, it brings only a minimally
greater likelihood of interaction. Yet as one peruses the
connection display of one’s various acquaintances, it often
happens that a particular person appears repeatedly — here,
the connection is stronger, for multiple foci are shared, and
the likelihood of making a real connection higher.
Connections are not just the natural effect of shared interests:
people deliberately try to reconfigure the network in order to
bring disparate acquaintances together: ‘[W]hen an individual
is confronted with the typical situation of ties to disconnected
others, he or she may try to change the situation by creating
and/or finding a new focus around which to organise his or her
joint activities with the others... Individuals are most likely to
engage in such creative network manipulation in situations
where relationships involve a high proportion of their time,
effort and emotion, and where the relationships are based on
compatible foci’ [10]. Feld’s conception of ties emphasises the
cost of maintaining them, as well as the benefits that ensue
from having them.
For Feld, bringing one’s friends together makes social life
easier and more efficient; activities that used to sustain one
group of friendships now sustain two. This is an important
concept for social networking sites, for it posits a benefit to
the person who serves as the introducer of two others. Some
sites are designed to help users create foci. Tribe.net, for
instance, encourages users to form topical discussion groups
(i.e. tribes) and to invite people whom they would like to bring
together, in the context of that topic, to join them.
4.2 Incompatible connections
Feld is careful to always add the caveat that bringing people
together is desirable only if the foci are compatible. His formal
definition of compatibility is that it is the extent to which two
foci are involved in similar interactions and activities, a
somewhat bland description that sounds as if the worst that
would happen should the two groups be introduced is mutual
boredom. Yet in a parenthetical statement he gives as a more
vivid example of incompatibility: ‘... a married man will be
we use time and space to
keep incompatible contexts
of our lives separate
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BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004
78
unlikely to introduce his friend from the singles bar to his
family or his work associates’.
In the physical world, we use time and space to keep
incompatible contexts of our lives separate. We may choose
not to introduce some acquaintances to each other and may
carefully orchestrate our activities to prevent overlap. Of
course, some chance encounters we would have preferred to
avoid inevitably occur — you are running around a park
playing silly games with your children, and run right into a
colleague you have been trying to impress with your steely
coolness; Goffman [28], who wrote extensively about the
performance of identity, discussed the salvaging of such
situations as the repair of face.
By making all of one’s connections visible to all the others,
social networking sites remove the privacy barriers that people
keep between different aspects of their lives. One school-
teacher in San Francisco described the discomfort she felt as
her high school students became involved with Friendster. She
had originally joined with some friends, many of whom had
created ‘crazy, fun’ profiles, including suggestive testimonials,
risqué photographs, and references to wild times at the
Burning Man festival. Friendster allows users to set who can
see their profile — immediate friends, friends of friends, their
friends, or everyone (see Fig 2 for a sample MyProfile page).
She had set her profile to be viewable only by friends — but
then was asked by one of her students to be a ‘friend’.
Although she could edit her own profile to be quite sedate, her
friends’ profiles were not. Accepting her student’s friendship
request would reveal her full network to her class, while saying
‘no’ felt rude and distancing. When people from different
contexts in one’s life meet, it is possible that the different
facets of one’s life will be revealed to each other. This need
not involve explicit gossip or even any discussion of the
common friend at all; sometimes simply encountering people
from different aspects of someone’s life can be quite
revealing. The discomfort can be felt both by the performer
caught in two roles and the observer. A posting in a discussion
group on Tribe.net about social network sites says:
‘My issue with Tribe is that the boundaries between
personal and professional are TOO fuzzy. I want to get
to the person, rather than to the pitch. On the other
hand, I really DON’T want to know that the person I’m
getting ready to do business with is in an open marriage
and into kinky redheads. I don’t want to see half-naked
pictures of them from Burning Man. It’s not that I’m a
prude, or offended by that stuff in general, it’s just not
stuff that I want to have pushed on me when I’m talking
business’.
One solution for the uncomfortable mixing of too hetero-
geneous a set of connections is for the sites themselves to be
well-defined and limited contexts, places with a clear set of
situational rules. LinkedIn does this by emphasising the
business focus. The profiles are limited to material that is
appropriate in a business setting and every aspect of the
interface encourages a relatively impersonal style of
interaction. Such an approach is less likely to be successful in
the social sites, however. There would need to be a vast
Balkanisation in which each group with incompatible mores
made its own site. This would also be counterproductive, as
the creation and strengthening of heterogeneous ties, when
they are not actually incompatible, is one of the key benefits of
these sites. It is, however, possible to design social networking
sites that allow for contextual privacy.
For example, today some sites allow users to designate that
some information will be seen by everyone and some only by
people within a particular degree of connection. On Orkut,
one can decide whether everyone, or just immediate
connections, can see information such as birthday or sexual
preference. However, connection degree is a very broad
classification — it does not allow you to make any distinctions
among the people you are linked to.
A more promising design solution is the ability to define a set
of categories and designate each person as a member of one
or more of these categories. One could then set which
sections of one’s profile or people in one’s network were for
viewing by particular acquaintances. Thus, to close friends one
might still show everything, but one could have a category of
‘work colleagues’ who would see only work related
information, and not be made aware of the more outrageous
connections. This faceting of profile and network would not be
apparent to anyone unless two people sat down and compared
what each could see of a third; that is analogous to real world
situations in which two people discuss a third whom they each
know in a different context. One could readjust what people
saw as relationships and individuals grew and changed. A
friend who starts off with a fairly innocuous self-presentation
might be made visible to all friends. But if he then chooses to
use his profile to make extremist political statements that one
disagrees with, he could be made visible as a connection only
to, say, other friends who are very politically engaged or to
close friends with whom everything is shared; to the rest, the
friendship would not be advertised. The ability to make one’s
network display nuanced and adaptable could be an important
piece in making social networking sites more generally useful.
5. The expanding network
The great exhortation of the social networking sites is to ‘grow
your network now!’ Meet new people, form new connections.
The goal is ever increasing social girth. The networking sites
make it much easier to form some kind of connection with
other people. On many of them, a simple click on the profile of
a person who intrigues you is all that it takes to launch an e-
mail to them, stating that you would like to be their ‘friend’ or
‘connection’. But what is our ability to sustain larger
networks? The emphasis of the networking sites is on network
growth, but the cost of maintaining large numbers of ties is
not addressed. Can new communications technologies expand
the number of people we can keep track of as friends? Having
a meaningful conversation with 500 friends would be very
temporally costly — but does sending a mass e-mail to all of
them in any way substitute for that bonding experience?
Wellman [5, 6] emphasises that network structures vary
considerably, both from culture to culture, and from person to
person. In some societies, one’s personal network is essential
for obtaining the necessities of daily life, including access to
health care, work, repairs, etc. In others, such as
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BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004 79
contemporary urban North America, the close personal
network often focuses on domestic life, providing
companionship and emotional support. Ties have many
characteristics: the context in which they formed, the
frequency of contact, the closeness of the relationship.
Individuals also have a wide social variability across
characteristics such as gregariousness, range of interests,
available time, resources, etc. To understand an individual’s
network-based social situation is necessary to look beyond just
their immediate structure. Two people who each have a
network consisting of a few close ties can have structurally
quite different access to information and support. One whose
network is composed of ties within a single dense cluster is
likely to have more support, but less access to information
than one whose ties are to busy people who themselves have
large, heterogeneous networks.
For this discussion, we will use a simplified typology of strong
and weak ties and their effect on support and information
flow. Strong ties, the kinds of ties that exist among close
friends and families, the kinds of ties that connect dense
clusters, are, in general, good sources for social support. Such
ties can be costly to maintain, requiring much time and
attention. Strong ties generally feature frequent contact,
Fig 2 Sample Friendster profile page.
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BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004
80
multiple foci, and are found in dense networks. A person who
is a member only of a densely linked group will be privy to all
the information that flows through that group, but is limited to
the opportunities present in that cluster. Weak ties, the kinds
of ties that exist among people one knows in a specific and
limited context, are good sources for novel information. Such
ties often bridge disparate clusters, providing one with access
to new knowledge [13]. Weak ties can be less costly to
maintain, and a person who has many weak yet
heterogeneous ties has access to a wide range of information
and opportunities (see Wellman and Potter [5], Wellman and
Gulia [6], Burt [13], Granovetter [25, 29] and Lin [30] for more
detailed models of social networks).
Wellman observed that a typical personal network included
3—6 very close and intimate ties, 5—15 less close but still
significant and active ties, and about 1000 more distant
acquaintances. People have made connections all along this
continuum via social network sites. There are people who have
ended up married to someone they met via such a site, thus
making a very close connection. Especially for people whose
local network is limited (such as someone who has recently
moved to a new city), the networking sites provide a useful
service, helping them find new friends and community. In
many cases, the resulting personal network is similar to the
sort of network they would have had had they met through
more traditional means. There are also people who use the
networking sites to make a very large number of new
connections — connections made more quickly, for less cost
and in much greater numbers than is commonly done. It is this
phenomenon that we will examine here.
We hypothesise that the number of strong ties an individual
can maintain may not be greatly increased by communication
technology (although such technologies may decrease the
importance of physical proximity [6, 29]), but that the number
of weak ties one can form and maintain may be able to
increase substantially, because the type of communication
that can be done more cheaply and easily with new technology
is well suited for these ties. If this is true, it implies that the
technologies that expand one’s social network will primarily
result is an increase in available information and opportunities
— the benefits of a large, heterogeneous network [25, 31].
Given that benefit, is there any reason not to grow one’s
network as large as possible? Certainly there are participants
on these sites whose goal is to build huge personal networks,
for a variety of reasons. For some amassers of giant networks
they are an end in themselves. On Friendster, which provides
personal network counts showing how many 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
degree connections one has, people made a game of
collecting as many connections as possible. One user said,
‘What else is the site good for? It’s not like you can do
anything there besides look at the number of people in your
network.’ These energetic collectors of links were often
referred to as ‘Friendster whores’, a pejorative term that was
sometimes used self-mockingly, but also reflects the negative
reaction of people who realised that an invitation to join
someone’s network of friends arrived not because they were
perceived as an interesting or desirable person, but simply as
an addition to a collection of links, one among hundreds. For
other extensive network builders, the network is a means to an
end. One participant on LinkedIn with over 3500 connections
says in his profile: ‘You just clicked through to the most active
networker in London, the UK and aiming to be the most
connected person in the world by 2050 when I reach 86 years
of age.’ His business is social networking and he claims to
have found numerous associates through his LinkedIn
network; testimonials describe him as acutely gregarious.
For the wholesale collectors of links, the ‘Friendster whores’,
the benefit of creating a huge network was the game — the
challenge and competition. But what about the more serious
network builders? What benefits do they derive from amassing
big sets of links? For some, the sites function as an awareness
tool, a way to be reminded of friends and acquaintances. For
others, the sites — as promised — provide opportunities to
find information, dates, and jobs. These are the people who
are using these sites as exploratory vehicles for navigating an
extended social network.
The cost of growing a network varies from site to site. The
more socially oriented sites, such as Orkut and Friendster,
make adding new connections very easy: just click on a link
and a message is sent with the connection request; one can
optionally add a message to the request. LinkedIn makes this
process a bit harder, by requiring the requestor to provide the
desired connection’s e-mail address, as proof that he or she
knows the person (or has been able to find it through Google).
Otherwise, LinkedIn will facilitate an introduction. Here, one
supplies a note explaining why the connection is desired, and
LinkedIn will forward it along the chain of connections
reaching from requestor to target. Each of those people must
read the request and forward it on with their approval or the
connection is not made. Everyone is paying a cost in time and
energy; furthermore, they are paying a cost in terms of social
favours. Each person is requesting a favour of the person
above. The initiator stands to gain a desired connection but
the benefit to the intermediaries is less clear. It is important
that the requestor make a compelling case for the
introduction, something that will make the intermediaries feel
that they are doing the recipient a favour, rather than using up
some of their own good will with the recipient for the benefit
of an unknown requestor. By adding these costs into the
process of making connections to unknown people, LinkedIn
makes the display of connections more significant — either
they are known to each other, or some higher cost has been
paid for the connection. Furthermore, LinkedIn members are
reminded in the connection request e-mail that they may be
asked to vouch for the person who is making the request, a
reminder that accepting a connection is an implicit
endorsement. A large network will engender numerous
connection requests; here, connectivity has a cost.
It is interesting to note that even though the cost of making
connections is higher on LinkedIn than on the social sites, the
large-scale network builders on LinkedIn have far more links
networking sites streamlines
the introduction process,
but at a cost
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BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 4 • October 2004 81
than the top participants in Friendster and Orkut. Presumably,
the benefit of having a large network here outweighs the cost.
Being the bridge between two otherwise disconnected people
or groups is a strategically important role [13], particularly if
there is valuable information or opportunites to be shared
between them. The bridge, being connected to these
disparate groups, has access to a broad range of information.
And, the bridge may be seen as valuable for the connections
he or she can make. In the traditional realm of personal
interaction, being the bridge requires considerable output in
time and energy to maintain a heterogeneous network, to
transmit information and to make introductions. Networking
sites streamlines much of this process, but does the loss of the
cost paid in personal interaction devalue the structure? A truly
personal request is enmeshed in a complex weave of social
obligations, but a semi-automated one, freed from this
entanglement, may in the end feel more like spam.
Indeed, that has been a problem with some of the more
socially oriented sites. Orkut and others make it possible to
broadcast messages to one’s network of friends and friends of
friends. In theory, this is a wonderful idea. Everyone has had
situations where they needed something — a babysitter, an
apartment — and asked everyone they could for leads. The
networking sites make it possible to do this with just a click
and a note. Then again, by making the process so low cost,
the value of asking people with whom one is at least indirectly
connected is lost. We look to our network of connections for
favours such as apartment leads not because they are the
people most likely to know about these things, but because
they are the people most likely to want to help us. We may fe el
obligated to help out a friend, or by request, the friend of a
friend, in a way we may not feel towards an unconnected
stranger. When the ties are too loose, when their cost is too
low, their function as the distinction between connection and
stranger is lost.
It is possible to imagine a scenario in which social networking
software plays an increasingly important role in our lives. For
instance, e-mail is becoming increasingly unusable as spam
fills inboxes, keeping one step ahead of the filtering heuristics.
Perhaps a social network based filter is the solution — e-mail
from your connections would always go through, and perhaps
from the next degree out. Anyone else would need to go
through a chain of connections to reach your inbox (or at least,
to reach it with the seal of approved non-junk). Here we see
again the balance of growth versus boundaries. A larger
network lets you be more easily reachable, and connections
who themselves are highly connected bring more
opportunities for easy contact — or for renewed junk mail. The
socially promiscuous networker who happily accepts every
connection request could easily be the unwitting conduit of
next-generation spam. Here, one might choose to limit one’s
connections to people who in turn chose their connections
carefully — thus making indiscriminate connections costly in
terms of opportunities lost in what might be preferred
connections.
Networks are the extension of our social world; they also act as
its boundary. We may use the network to extend the range of
people we can contact; we may use it to limit the people who
can contact us. Most of the networking sites so far are
designed to grow networks, not limit them. Yet costs and
limits can add value. The expenditure of energy to maintain a
connection is a signal of its importance and of the benefits it
bestows.
6. The evolution of social networking sites
Social networking sites are booming. Many have received
venture funding and there are numerous enthusiastic reports
that cite them as the next great wave in technology, business
and/or social life. Yet, there are also signs that social
networking, at least in its present incarnation, may be more
craze than lasting revolution. The early and once enthusiastic
users of these sites are frequently quoted as saying that they
are ‘over’, that once one has amassed a big collection of
‘friends’ there is really nothing to do on the sites, and that
they have ceased using them. This is a typical fashion diffusion
pattern. The innovators lead, then when the rest imitate, it is
time for differentiation. This has been happening among these
sites, as users moved from Friendster to Tribe.net to Orkut,
but will at some point the fashion that is over be the sites
themselves? Or will they play an increasingly important role in
defining one’s personal on-line neightbourhoods?
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Judith Donath, head of the Media Lab’
s
Sociable Media group, explores the social
side of computing, building innovative
interfaces for the on-line communities,
virtual identities, and computer-mediated
collaborations that have emerged with the
convergence of computing and com-
munication. She received an MS and a PhD
in media arts and sciences from MIT and a
BA in history from Yale University. She ha
s
worked professionally as a designer and
builder of educational software and
experimental media.
danah boyd is a PhD student in infor-
mation management at the University o
f
California, Berkeley.
She studies Friendster and blogging in
order to understand how people negotiate
their presentation of self in mediated
social contexts to an unknown audience.
Previously, she studied computer science
at Brown University and sociable media a
t
the MIT Media Lab.
