The conceptual answer: They don't discuss important matters with their Facebook friends. They may reveal important information, but the discussion (if both are called that) is different. The operational answer: 200 "friends" on Facebook is a status indicator because it's atypical. Most Facebook participants have far fewer, and most Americans aren't on Facebook. -eg
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Wellman Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 7:42 PM To: aoir list Subject: [Air-l] disjunction
The US General Social Survey claims the average American has slightly more than 2 people they discuss important matters with.
Our Connected Lives and Pew Strength of Ties studies show somewhat higher numbers (see Hogan, Carrasco & Wellman on our website). But still reckoned by the dozen (or two).
When the inevitable reporter calls, how do I reconcile these numbers with the 100-200 or so that folks on this list are saying are Facebook "friends".
Does anyone have a distribution of the # of friends per Facebook account: mean, median, mode, quartiles, ranges would be nice too.
Barry _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162
You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________
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