Loose ties in new media...

Category: People

Published: 12/17/2008 07:35 a.m.

Attention is scarce. With the growth of social media, many people are meeting others and growing their digital Rolodex exponentially. Some media experts have thousands of followers on twitter, and many that read their blog daily. They have used social media to create themselves as a brand, and are using technology to open the floodgates of communication. The problem this creates surrounds the concept of loose ties and what that means for new media.

On Facebook, you "friend" someone. The noun is now a verb. In my early days of using Facebook (then Thefacebook) it seemed ridiculous to me to "friend" someone I had known for years, or someone I saw everyday. I was used to an old way of thinking about friends. I was used to close ties. I was not a socialite so I had a few close friends, but not many acquaintance-type friends. So social websites seemed a bit redundant. That is, until I started using them to collect loose ties. I would meet someone at a party and we would talk for a bit, and the next day I would have a facebook friend invite. Or I would ride with someone in CARPOOL, and later that week I would gain a friend on facebook. For some this seemed like a competition to collect friends, but I was still stuck on the idea of close ties.

Loose ties are being made more and more on sites like twitter or friendfeed. People read something by someone else, and click a "follow" link, which is less invasive then "friend". On occasion these relationships can transition. I have already met someone in real life that I originally met on twitter. They are moving from a loose tie to a close one. And the recognition of this transition is important, because it relates back to attention.

Back before Facebook and the internet, if someone wanted to get your attention, they called you. On the receiving side, we had the phone make an alarm sound alerting us, and thus, gaining our attention. For this to work, we could only give our phone number to people whom we trusted. We were essentially giving out a path that says "Here, this is a way you can get my attention." It worked well, until you gave your phone number out to too many people. Then your phone rang all the time, and the more it rang, the less alerted you were, and the less you wanted to give it your attention.

Enter the internet. With more less-invasive ways to get people's attention, there is a flood of communication that people can drown in. There are some tech celebs that publish an email address. I would guess that they do not read a majority of their email. It comes in too fast. And they are busy doing other things. What this really creates is a fake attention-path. You think you can get in touch with someone who publishes a means, but really, your message likely gets lost.

What all of these social networks have really done is better defined what it means to be a loose tie. But what is still lacking (for most people) is a new ruleset. Close tie people should have different access to my attention then loose tie people. When one communication platform becomes flooded, you need a way to parse out the important information. And as a starter, important info is much more likely to come from a close tie than a loose one.

For me, my cell phone number is a good way to segregate ties. People I am close with have it, and people that are loose ties do not. So, when my phone rings, I am free to answer and not worry that I am wasting my attention. On the flip side, twitter @replies or Facebook messages are ways I can communicate with loose ties. Anyone on twitter can @reply me and anyone at A&M or in nyc can Facebook message me. And I treat those types of messages with less urgency than a phone call.

In the end, it is all about attention and making sure things don't get flooded. If my phone got flooded with calls because I gave out my cell too much, I would have to find a new way to filter out things from close ties. So, if you are just getting into new media and social networks, be aware of how you are letting people get your attention.