Christmas is dawning upon us. For social scientists, marketeers, designers, and alike it is almost christmas every day these days. Social network sites (SNS) provide an overwhelming overload of data. It seems that Santa has never been more generous.
Nicole B. Ellison (et.al) has studied “The benefits of Facebook” extensively, and she finds that SNS has a positive effect on the accumulation of social capital, especially when it comes to the kind of social capital referred to as bridging. Furthermore Ellison concludes that SNS help people maintain relationships in opposition to earlier studies of the Internet which usually ended up concluding that the Internet isolates people. At the same time SNS provide possibilities for the future for instance in terms of job opportunities, knowledge and information sharing.
For those of us who already know that SNS (and social software in general) can have a positive effect on the accumulation of social capital Ellison’s conclusion does not come as a surprise. However one thing is what we know another is providing substantial evidence.