From Weak Ties to Strong Ties: Community vs. Social Networks 3

Good food for thought Michael,

I'd add a fourth point, namely that strong ties and weak ties are fluid notions based on time and context. You yourself use terms such as "at some point in my life", "frequent engagement", "time spent together". It's like the person in your College group of friends that never got married and the rest of the group that did; at one time that person will ahve more difficulties to relate to the life of the others and what was once a strong tie can peter out. And there are hundreds of thousands of examples like that

In terms of online communities, it may be interesting to look at how ties evolve over time as interests evolve or simply the lifestage changes: a tie is not set in stone (but I guess you will cover this in stage 3...)., so it may be just as interest to research how strong ties devolve into weak ones - and maybe do something about it...  :)

Cheers,

Mark