Crossing Bridges with iOS 16
How do people meet their friends? Oftentimes, it is through the friends of their friends. Some sort of event or topic causes one person to bring the people they know together, expanding everyone’s network as a result. Want to throw a birthday party? You probably have friends from all sorts of different places that you want to celebrate with, including coworkers, classmates and teammates. Some of these people will definitely be meeting for the first time thanks to your party. But not all connections are made in person. Apple just made it easier to form connections virtually thanks to Apple’s new iOS 16. In addition to making it easier to SharePlay and strengthen already existing connections (changing them from weak to strong links), the addition of “shared Tab Groups” will help people meet others, allowing them to expand their networks and cross local bridges.
The shared Tab Groups was implemented by Apple “to share a collection of websites with friends and family, making it seamless to add tabs and see what others are viewing” (Apple). This increases the likelihood of strangers meeting each other due to common interests. Say, for example, person A shares a bunch of tabs about their favorite singer with their friends. One of their friends, Person B, also has a lot of friends interested in this singer. However, Person B’s friends have never interacted with Person A or Person A’s friends. Thus, there is currently a local bridge between Person A and Person B, as the removal of their connection would put its “endpoints” in different compartments; there would be no direct path between Person A and Person B’s friend groups. However, Person B decides to share the tabs about the singer with their friends as well. What was previously a local bridge between A and B’s friend groups through A and B can suddenly be crossed since now their friends will all know about each other and have access to some sort of method of communication. Weak links between the groups can be formed, and these weak links can turn into strong connections as the people, the nodes, will have a common topic to talk to each other about.
While the shared Tab Groups feature from Apple might not seem life changing, it makes it easier for interest groups to form and for people to connect. People who previously had no connection to each other will be able to communicate and create their own ties. Due to the abundance of people who use Apple products, and the fact that many people will be interested in trying out a cool new feature from Apple, shared Tab Groups truly have the potential to be the catalyst of people forming strong connections and crossing bridges.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/09/ios-16-is-available-today/