How do People Become Connected?
http://community.lithium.com/t5/Science-of-Social-blog/How-Do-People-Become-Connected-Community-vs-Social-Networks-2/ba-p/6620
For one thing, everyone on this planet is connected by the same social network. There is not a divide somewhere that seperates one group of people from another. This means that everyone on this planet knows everyone else through some n number of connections, but no one is left out. In fact, research has confirmed the validity of a popular myth that states, “most people are actually within 6 to 7 degrees of each.” Therefore you can, theoretically, reach and connect to one of 6.8 billion people on this planet in relatively few steps.
In reality, people dont connect to the whole world. Some people dont even connect with everyone who is living in the same city, going to the same school, or working in the same company. To understand what prevents people from connect, we must break down the lifecyle of any relationship into three stages:
1. Creating the Weak Ties: First stage of any relationship
2. Building the Tie Strength: Forming strong ties from weak ones
3. Maintaining the Relationship: Prevents strong relationships from decaying and reverting back to weak ties.
So how do people choose which tie to form, which on to develp, and which to maintain? The answer is non-trivial and is currnetly a subject of intense research. Of the social network formation models, all of them are based of Game Theory. For simplicity, a person’s choice is the result of a cost-benefit analysis of the action they are about to take. For example, in creating a weak tie, both entities will analyze the cost and benefit for creating such a tie as long as both feel that the benefit out weighs the risk. Also remember no ties can be created unless two people desire to “connect” to each other.
Besides the personal desire to connect, there are environmental factors that can affect tie formation by limiting people’s ability to reach each other. The two mechanisms that allow people to meet and connect are communities and social networks. To put it simply, this means that if two people have more connections in common then the greater the chance for them to encounter, especially if those connections are a small number of degrees away.
To sum things up, weak ties can pretty much form anywhere, in communities or through social networks. Additionally, the formation of weak ties depends on not only their desire to connect, but the amount of shared connections and network distance (degrees of seperation) between them.