News in Brief: Social Networks

Science News ^ | June 8, 2011 | Science News Staff

[muawiyah]

Power networks in Congress, Twitter’s crystal ball and iPhone contagion in news from an MIT workshop

[muawiyah]

Science News has a series of articles about Social Networks ~ and some of this stuff is surprising. The Gang of Six for example ~ not at all who you think they are, but there they are.

Another article in the same issue suggests that in large social networks the guys who are most popular in terms of links are not running the show ~ instead that's being run by people off to the side.

Freepers should be happy to know about that ~ you don't need all the net traffic to be the dominant player. What you need is the good stuff and know ways to pump it into the broad masses, and I think we've got that down.

[muawiyah]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/74180/title/Networks_dominated_by_rule_of_the_few ~ MORE HERE ~ why Freepers Can Rule

[dalereed]

Social networks are the stupidest thing i’ve ever heard of!

[Paladin2]

"Dense networks are generally easier to control."

That's why the 'Rats are so successful.

[muawiyah]

No they are not. They try, but that doesn’t mean they are successful. Their forte is ELIMINATING THE COMPETITION.

[muawiyah]

Then what are you doing here?

[bvw]

That’s interesting. More data-based than Malcolm Gladwell’s mavens, connectors and salesmen.

[muawiyah]

Yes, isn't it. My observations over the years were that no matter how professional managers organized Postal Headuarters (which always had 2000 to 4000 employees) there were maybe 50 people ~ virtually all of them safely off to the side ~ who actually RAN everything by influencing events.

For quite some time we had a situation where the brass actually thought they ran the business ~ and that didn't work out at all. Took a while but the informal "influence" network reasserted itself.

[dalereed]

this ain’t a twitter or facebook.

I don’t know anyone personally that does those stupid things.

Anyone that wants to contact me has to call on the phone or write me a letter, texting is forbiden and we have our phones blocked so no one can do that stupid thing!

[Greysard]

FR, as any other blog with registered users, is a social network, simply by definition. However it is not Twitter or FB. It's more like a club where we can come, listen to what others say, perhaps say a few words ourselves, and leave.

Modern social networks, however, are designed to be much more invasive. Twitter gets into your cell phone wherever you are, and you are expected (conditioned) to respond in kind, by sending messages back or forwarding or whatever they do there. The end result is that tens of millions of people are constantly busy sending information-free messages to each other, and paying through the nose to their cellular networks for the privilege. The fast pace of communication there doesn't allow time or space to think and formulate one's message. Twitter as a company doesn't care; the owners are safe in their knowledge that humans like to talk about nothing, and Twitter's servers are there to satisfy that need.

[dalereed]

“FR, as any other blog with registered users”

Ask Jim, this isn’t a blog, he’s said so many times in the past, if it was I would quit, I refuse to read one!

[Explorer89]

The Senate “Gang of 6” could be viewed in reverse: these guys only voted “yes” when they knew that the legislation was going to pass. They may not have been the sheepdogs, but the sheep.

[bvw]

Some parallel here:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/most-magnetic-material-ever-created-iron-and-nitrogen-might-overturn-laws-physics