Like people you see once a year or less, maybe because they live far away, or maybe they're locals you met once or twice but just don't know that well.
Weak ties can be incredibly valuable for finding events, housing (or roommates), partners, even jobs.
I've been living happily without Facebook for over a year and doing fine. But I realized I didn't have a solution to the weak tie problem, and was missing out on opportunities.
Visiting New York City, I met some great people and thought how nice it would be to hang out with those same people next time I'm in NYC, so I wouldn't have to start over there socially. But that could be a year from now. After a year of no contact, if I call them out of the blue, it'd be awkward at best.
This problem actually motivated me to sign back up for Facebook. In theory any social network could do the trick, but no one's heard of Tent or Diaspora, and only a handful of people you meet are even on Twitter. What most of these folks are on, is Facebook.
I'd really like to know what other ways people keep up with weak ties, or if some just hate Facebook so much they accept the loss of opportunities as a cost of living without it.
After much deliberation, I deleted my Facebook account around 1.5 years ago. I even ensure that nothing from Facebook can be accessed from my computer.
Like you, I have lost out on the weak ties, but have decided that I would rather lose those than let Facebook know everything in my personal life and my activities on the web.
I'm trying to find some middle ground. For example, I use Ghostery to block Facebook comments and like buttons, so they're not aware of my activities on the web. And I've used a special email just to sign up for Facebook, so people don't find me there unless I want them to. I'm not friending everyone I know, only the weak ties I don't have a better way to keep up with (i.e. they aren't on Twitter or something else).
Not sure how it'll work out long run, but right now Facebook knows very little about me.
By talking to them once a year, same as I did before Facebook was invented. I'm not sure why you think there's any awkwardness involved? If you're in New York once a year, you make contact with the people you know in New York once a year. This is perfectly normal behavior, always has been.
For a good personal friend, yes, that works. What if it was just a chance meeting? You can try calling a year later, but in my experience people won't make time for someone they barely remember.
Well now you're talking about a scenario where you don't actually have any connection to the person and don't have anything to offer him next time around to make it worth his while meeting you a second time. In that scenario, spending the intervening year faking a relationship on Facebook doesn't strike me as a productive use of either party's time.
How do you maintain weak ties?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties#Research_da...
Like people you see once a year or less, maybe because they live far away, or maybe they're locals you met once or twice but just don't know that well.
Weak ties can be incredibly valuable for finding events, housing (or roommates), partners, even jobs.
I've been living happily without Facebook for over a year and doing fine. But I realized I didn't have a solution to the weak tie problem, and was missing out on opportunities.
Visiting New York City, I met some great people and thought how nice it would be to hang out with those same people next time I'm in NYC, so I wouldn't have to start over there socially. But that could be a year from now. After a year of no contact, if I call them out of the blue, it'd be awkward at best.
This problem actually motivated me to sign back up for Facebook. In theory any social network could do the trick, but no one's heard of Tent or Diaspora, and only a handful of people you meet are even on Twitter. What most of these folks are on, is Facebook.
I'd really like to know what other ways people keep up with weak ties, or if some just hate Facebook so much they accept the loss of opportunities as a cost of living without it.