The Connector Website Model New Implications for Social ... - PRWeb

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) also features social networking capabilities and
uses an even more restricted network model for nurturing its online community.
LinkedIn facilitates business and professional networking. The company describes its
connecting protocol as “…users can be approached [only] if one of their trusted contacts
forwards a contact request to them because they believe it is an opportunity their contact
will appreciate.” 44 In essence LinkedIn constrains access to its members. This is quite
more restrictive than MySpace, Friendster, and other more social or friends-based
websites. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, converted a common offline social
process into an online process. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have taken steps to frame
their online communities by respective needs, interests, and priorities, while establishing
large and somewhat restricted social networks.
To sum up this section, first and second generation connector websites have
clearly set out to enable weak ties between users, first by social search, and then by
phasing in social networking. Following the successes of pioneering connectors, many of
the 2005 and 2006 startup connectors have embedded social networking applications into
their platforms. (see Appendix D) Given the premise stated earlier, that in general a
connector enables social processes that can lead to exponential change, we should expect
these websites to show evidence of exponential trends. Longitudinal website traffic data
and user growth rates should supply the evidence. To the best of my knowledge and
review, no prior research exists evaluating website traffic to determine whether or not a
website demonstrates exponential change over time.
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