Connected Presence

I’ve often wondered why the very shallow links that social networking sites allow between people seem to matter. An earlier blog posting looked at the vanity aspect.

The economist has a perspective in their special report on mobile telecoms written by  Andreas Kluth, that although used to explain some of the social aspects of mobile communications, has relevance here and I have extrapolated slightly

The concept is called connected presence.

I remember distinctly the doom and gloom reports about the negative impact on society from internet use when we were going through the dotcom boom. Let’s face it, there will always be people who push the limits. Like Mr Lee the unfortunate Korean gamer who died after playing Starcraft online for 50 hours with few breaks.

Most of us however are well adjusted and have adapted to our new, fast past and connected world by having frequent and short exchanges with people where less content is expected but people stay connected on an emotional level even though they are physically separated.

This is what is known as connected presence. The problem is that while it strengthens ties between distinct groups of people (family units; close friends etc) it causes these groups to turn in on themselves and weaken the ‘weak ties’ in society which bridge and joins these cliques into networks and allow the transmission of ideas, fads and trends.

The Economist conclusion is that since the ‘outburst of pessimism’ in the 90s the web has become an increasingly social medium with social networking sites allowing people to keep in contact with much larger groups of people, strengthening these ‘weak links’.