Prior to today (Feb 11), I did not really believe the theory that social networking creates weak ties that benefit those involved. The prime example of this concept that I was familiar with came from Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody. Within the first chapter Shirky, gives the example that many east coast residents might be familiar with. A woman named Ivanna left her phone, a Sidekick, in the back of a New York City cab. This account happened during the age when not everyone had a Blackberry or iPhone. So, Ivanna contacted a tech-savvy friend and asked him to email the phone with a message offering a reward for its return. However, there was no response. Eventually, Ivanna gave up and bought a new Sidekick. The transition was made easy because her cell phone company’s network stored all of the information on her old phone, so as soon as she activated her new phone all the data was immediately transferred. The most significant part of the story is that Ivanna could actually see everything that the person who had stolen her sidekick was doing on her old phone. She attempted to contact this person and got no response, so she proceeded to contact the police to try to recover her stolen property. Of course, they were of no assistance. Her tech-savvy friend then made a post on his website entitled “StolenSidekick” in order to inform friends of the situation that Ivanna was in. He started to form weak ties with various people who also saw a problem with Ivanna’s experience with the police and the person who stole her phone. The blog post continued to grow and grow and was eventually picked up on Digg and gained even more notoriety. This led to the story being picked up by local media outlets. At this point, the public outrage became so great that the police were compelled to act and eventually arrested the 16-year-old girl who stole Ivanna’s phone.
To me this, Ivanna’s situation was a heartwarming, feel good story about the wonderful power of weak ties that were created through social networking, but initially, I did not believe that I could actually gain any type of knowledge through the weak social networking ties that I have established. I quickly realized that I was very wrong.
This change in opinion came as I was strolling through the Lehigh Valley Mall with one of my teammates. We ventured to the mall for the purpose of finding some Valentine ’s Day gifts for significant others, so naturally we had to go to a candy store because what kind of woman doesn’t want some kind of chocolate for Valentine’s day ? The store contained all of the usual heart shaped boxes of chocolates, stuffed animals, balloons, and other cliché gifts. My teammate selected a traditional white teddy bear holding a heart that said “I love you” filled with chocolate which is pretty much the standard for Valentine ’s Day. None of this was surprising, but what shocked me was once we got to the register I saw a sign for “Dipped Berries in a velvet heart box,” aka chocolate covered strawberries. The shocking part about this was that each individual strawberry was $21.99! As the ever-connected social media junkie that I am, I immediately took a picture of this and uploaded it to Twitter with the caption, “Women out there if your man get you chocolate covered strawberries you better like them.. look at that price.” I honestly wasn’t expecting any kind of response from my followers; I really just wanted to put that picture out there so people could see how outrageous the price was. However, my Professor replied to it and Retweeted it to his 733 followers. Of course, as a result of the laws of social networking one of his followers also replied to me.
A weak social networking tie had just been formed, and from this a discussion began between my professor, his follower and I. The follower asked my professor and I if we dipped our own strawberries, and I was a bit slow to respond so naturally, my professor sassed me because that’s the kind of teacher student relationship that we have. I finally responded “Haha, I was actually just talking to one of my teammates about doing that.” My professor responded with “I actually could dip my own strawberries. Praying we’re still talking about the same thing.” The content of the conversation is irrelevant really, but it sets up the lesson that was learned. His follower than replied “How do you season the chocolate?” At this point I start to realize that this weak tie that I had just formed is about to give me a mini lesson on how to make homemade chocolate covered strawberries. I told the follower that I simply planned to melt either a Twix or MilkyWay in a pot and dip the strawberries in the melted candy. The follower goes on to mention that the Twix might be a bit messy and suggests that I may also want to try to simply melt a Snickers and put that on top of some ice cream.
Weak ties in social networking are real. They have a lot of power to influence and help individuals who are just looking for some guidance or suggestions from people that they are more than likely to never speak to. The fact that a random writer, translator and PR consultant would take the time out of her night to give me advice on how to make chocolate covered strawberries is amazing to me because these weak ties really have the capability to make things a lot easier for people. Simply because now we have the capability to use our biggest resource which is each other, these weak ties foster communication and, although not all of it is meaningful, it is definitely helpful.
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