Comments on: LinkedIn Wants You to Learn Social Capital Theory

By: Michael Cayley

Michael Cayley — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:47:42 +0000

The manifesto went up today Bill:

http://www.changethis.com/50.05.SocialCapital

By: frogpond » Social capital theory - nicely explained

frogpond » Social capital theory - nicely explained — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:35:03 +0000

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By: acidlabs » This Week’s Links on Ma.gnolia

acidlabs » This Week’s Links on Ma.gnolia — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:00:38 +0000

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By: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:00:02 +0000

We share a very similar mindset. We both think for the future and invest in long-term relationships (rather than transactional relationships). That makes a huge impact.

Every network will have strong ties (bonds) and weak ties (bridges). Many people think that the global network is now a giant “cocktail party on steroids” that will lead to fame, success, and easy money.

If it were only that easy . . .

I believe people have to be willing to invest in people and your network–nurturing both homogeneous strong ties as well as those very valuable heterogeneous weak ties.

More importantly, people need to think about their network in terms of their long-term goals. A commercial real-estate agent will need a very different social graph (and social capital) than someone who’s a world-class academic.

Homogeneity/heterogeneity of profession, geography, and affinity become very significant dimensions.

BTW, you’re now etched into my brain as “the speed-talking Aussie who can boldly say “I can give that presentation in nine, count ‘em NINE minutes.”

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:44:08 +0000

Bill, I entirely agree. Too many people build their social networks on volume rather than quality. While I have a largish network on a number of social sites – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook particularly – I think my quality outweighs my quantity. I’ve had the privilege of meeting face-to-face most of the people in my metworks and maintain contact with almost all of them on a regular basis.

Yes, there are a few that are purely business acquaintances, but I’m comfortable with those very weak ties. There will come a day…

By: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:30:56 +0000

I watched the presentation on slouching towards intertwingularity . . . . (although, I’ll admit, I had this delightful vision of a mashup between Yeats and Lewis Carroll with that title)

I especially liked the statistic that North Americans could create a Wikipedia each weekend instead of watching commercials. And your comments about millenials and participatory culture is spot on.

In my perspective, I’ve seen a lot of people rush to social media without thinking about what it means to them. For example, people connect on LinkedIn with the same degree of casualness that they exchange business cards. However, there’s very little social capital involved in that exchange.

The current trend (with much social noise) is to connect with anyone “friend and forget.” People are, sadly applying the same mindsets for building local social networks to building global social networks . . . a strategy that doesn’t really work well.

My interest revolves on creating mindsets that allow people to build meaningful connections across the globe . . . creating a new vocabulary of relationship building in the global age.

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:14:09 +0000

Bill, thanks for this great analysis. Your thread-drawing with Granovetter's work really resonated with me. Indeed, I highlighted Granovetter in my recent talks on participatory culture and weak ties - Slouching Towards Intertwingularity.

By: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:38:24 +0000

I read the PPT deck, and I’m interested in seeing the manifesto. Definitely shoot me a copy.

It’s nice to see work that fluidly cites Burt, Lin, and Krebs.

By: Michael Cayley

Michael Cayley — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:58:13 +0000

Hi Bill & Graham,

I have developed Social Capital Value Add based upon Nan Lin’s network theory of social capital.

You can read about it at http://www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com.

It will be released as a http://www.changethis.com manifesto in September.

I hope that we can connect.

best,
Michael

By: This Week’s Links on Ma.gnolia | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon

This Week’s Links on Ma.gnolia | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:59:16 +0000

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