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 _____________________________________________________________________
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 _____________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Hi all- In a recent crawl of users at Michigan State University, here are the numbers of "friends" as scraped from profiles. Friends at MSU mean: 84 median: 66 mode: 1 range: 1 - 418 quartiles: 25 1 50 66 75 136 Friends at other schools mean: 80 median: 65 mode: 1 range: 1 - 1297 quartiles: 25 1 50 65 75 115 The usual caveats apply. These results are from MSU solely, from a few months ago. etc. etc. Our survey data indicates that "friends" are people met offline who become online connections. This is my first post to the list, so "hi" as well. Cliff Lampe -----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 10:42 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 _____________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
participants (3)
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Barry Wellman -
Cliff Lampe -
Ellis Godard