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All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites. Yet, time and time again, I hear problematic assumptions so let me start with some claims: Not all social networks are the same. You cannot assume network transitivity. You cannot assume that properties that hold for one network apply to other networks. To address this, I want to begin by mapping out three distinct ways of modeling a social network. These are not the only ways of modeling a social network, but they are three common ways that are often collapsed in public discourse.

Sociological "personal" networks. Sociologists have been working hard to measure people's personal networks and much of the theory of social networks stems from analysis done on these networks.

Most sociological theory stems from analyses of these personal networks. Social capital, weak ties, homophily, ... all of those theories you've heard about are based on personal networks. Given that these are typically measured by eliciting people's understandings of certain categories (e.g., "friend"), there's a strong overlap between everyday language around social networks and the categories being measured.

Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities

Web 2.0 tools have critically elevated the social networking activity and skills of individuals. Not only are young people highly active in social networks, but older individuals are also showing a huge increase in their use of these tools. The attraction of older age groups is, of course, social connection and community building among professional and casual peers and friends. The following graph of a Pew Internet study shows the various age groups and the increase of use

We’ve spent a lot of time at my school thinking about the concept of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). We live in an age of information abundance. Our students need to learn how to find, evaluate, organize, synthesize, remix and re-purpose information in order to understand and solve complex problems.A PLN isn’t a particularly new idea; learning networks have existed for a long time. What’s new is the reach and extent that’s now possible for a PLN, with technology and global interconnectedness providing the opportunity for a much wider, richer and more diverse PLN than ever before.

n noting the potential power of social networking tools for organizing mass change, I thought out loud for a moment about what kinds of dangers might emerge. It struck me, as I spoke, that there is a terrible analogy that might be applicable: the use of radio as a way of coordinating bloody attacks on rival ethnic communities during the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990s. I asked, out loud, whether Twitter could ever be used to trigger a genocide.

In a 1999 presentation for the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Professor Frank Chalk noted five circumstances that would allow the maximum intensity of a media-driven response to a crisis: the introduction of a new medium of communication, such as radio [or Twitter]; the use of a completely new style of communication; the wide-spread perception that a crisis exists; a public with little knowledge of the situation from other sources of information, and a deep-seated habit of obeying authority among the target audience. All of these circumstances pertain to the promulgation of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and many of them are found in other cases of genocide and genocidal killings, as well. It's easy to see how well this model applies to the Iranian situation, too. This shouldn't be read as an indictment of social networking technologies in general, or of Twitter in particular. As I said at the outset, I'm thrilled at how critical this technology has been to the viability and potential success of the pro-democracy demonstrations. As the cat-and-mouse game around proxy servers further suggests, the only way for a state to entirely cut off the use of these kinds of tools is to kill its own information networks, blinding itself and effectively removing itself from the global economy. What I'm arguing, however, is that we shouldn't see the positive political successes of emerging social tools as being the sole model. We should be aware that, as these tools proliferate, they will inevitably be used for far more deadly goals.

The SoMo experience begins with tools like GPS that can identify where we are and where we are going in real time. GPS is further enhanced through the marking of actual physical locations -- geotagging. Geotagging can include everything from "soundprints" to video markers, and the tagging of locally relevant reviews and news. GeoGraffiti, for example, allows mobile phone users to record a message tied to a specific place that is later retrievable by anyone who finds themselves near the same location. Geotaggers can leave a virtual "Kilgore was here" tag at any place, freezing in time and making publicly available their location-specific activities, interactions and thoughts. Mobile social networking is also coming on strong with applications like Foursquare and Britekite. Mobile phone users can discover each other, both friends and strangers, via profiles they make available at a particular location. Such applications are good for networking on the fly and immediately finding out if your friends are nearby at a given time.

With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times, journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn’t mean having a class on Facebook () or Twitter (), which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.

1. Promoting Content Social media tools are bringing readers to news sites and in many cases are increasing their Web-traffic. This isn’t just through the news organizations’ own social media accounts, but those of their writers that tweet, post, share and send links to their organization’s content. Each writer has a social network, and using social media tools to promote and distribute content increases the potential readership of the article being shared. Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, said this is one of the most basic and yet very important social media uses for journalists.

3. News Gathering and Research The power of real-time search is providing journalists with up-to-the-second information on the latest developments of any news, trends and happenings, worldwide. Jeff Jarvis, a professor and director of interactive media at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, said it’s important for students to know how to use real-time searches to gather information and keep up on what is breaking. This includes, but is not limited to, using search on Twitter, FriendFeed (), OneRiot, Tweetmeme, Scoopler, and SearchMerge.