Why the web is changing

Social networks are not new

For thousands of years, people have formed into groups, built strong and weak relationships with others, formed allegiances, and spread rumor and gossip. We have always relied on each other. Humans are social creatures with a need to connect to others; whether we need information, advice, or emotional support, we turn to one another.

Human behavior changes much more slowly than technology

Often, businesses try to understand the social web by focusing on technology and technological change. But they need to focus on human behavior, which changes slowly. Much of our behavior is based on adaptations that took many thousands of years to evolve, and these behavior patterns are not going to change much in our lifetime. Instead, those who are successful with the social web today focus less on the technology itself and more on the communication and interaction it enables with the people they care about. This includes a group size that is hard-wired into our brains by evolution (as you’ll see in Chapter 3). Despite huge advances in communication technology over the past 200 years—for example, the invention of the telegraph, telephone, mobile phone, text messaging, instant messaging, and video calling—our social network structure has largely stayed the same. Our modern communications structure allows us to connect to hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, yet we still have a very small number of close friends. Despite the ability of digital communications to connect any two groups of people together, our groups of friends remain independent from each other. Despite being able to call anyone in our mobile phone address book, usually numbering hundreds of people, 80 percent of our phone calls are to the same four people.¹