How do social networks "work"?

A social network is a mechanism for interacting with people (Huberman, 2008. P. 2). Huberman explains that today, with the internet, these social networks have become even more prevalent. Huberman explains that the standard definition of a social network includes the idea that the network is composed of all the people one shares a relationship with. In the age of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and the modern social networks, however, this is not necessarily true. Huberman goes on to state that very few people actually interact with a great percentage of their network. Huberman cites a study that showed that Facebook users often have many friends but only message or interact with a select few of the large pool. Likewise, people often keep many phone numbers in their cell phone, however few of these stored numbers are often contacted. In order to define a social network, Huberman studied the social network of Twitter to see how relevant a list of friends is to members of a network. His study concluded that although one may have many declared followers and followees, these people have few “friends” who they direct posts towards (Huberman, 2008. P. 6). In turn Huberman proposed that there are truly two networks, one made up of many followers and followees and much smaller and simpler one made up of actual friends.

In explaining how social networks “work”, Snyder applies the social contract theory to explain how a society or network is built upon defining rules in order to govern itself (Snyder, 2007. P. 4). He explains that the moral obligations of a person create an agreement upon how act in a society, or in this case within a social network. The rules created by this define the users, the method in which the network is used, and the consequences for violating these rules (Snyder, 2007. P. 1).

Westlake explains that social networks act as a bridge to connect isolated users. Additionally, in the case of Facebook, these connections via the internet enhance face to face communication (Westlake, 2008. P. 31). Users look to strengthen social bonds through the social networks.


Huberman, B. A., Romero, D. M., & Wu, F. (2008, December 5). Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. Social Computing Laboratory, 1-9. Retrieved from http://www.hpl.hp.com/ research/scl/papers/twitter/twitter.pdf

Snyder, J., Carpenter, D., & Slauson, G. J. (2007, January 2). MySpace.com - A social networking site and social contract theory. Information Systems Education Journal, 5(2), 1-11. Retrieved from http://isedj.org/5/2/

Westlake, E. J. (2008, Winter). Friend me if you Facebook. The Drama Review, 52(4), 21-40.