The social web supports many interactions for friends, family members and business contacts. But rarely do you hear people in the web 2.0 space excited about acquaintances. But why not? Well, because acquaintances generally do not interact. The misguidance here is that the social web is only about interaction. It is not. The social web is about mimicking real world social behavior in a virtual environment. The benefits of which are that time and space matter far less, which allows social interactions to happen at a faster pace.
So, why do acquaintances matter? The answer is in social obligation. Social obligation lies behind the success of viral loops, asynchronous gaming and all of the major social networks. Invitations and messages are common forms of social obligations. Social obligations may also be known as an incomplete social act. An acquaintance is a long lingering form of an incomplete social interaction. You have become aware of that individual, and for a long time, will have you keeping track of this individual in the back of your mind until you take the next step in growing the relationship. Companies that leverage incomplete social acts are often much more successful.
I would argue that acquaintances is what supports a large portion of the traffic for blogs and news feeds, as they support and keep this interaction alive, particularly in the long tail of social blogging and microblogging. People keep track of acquaintances using these tools in hopes of finding a way of completing the social act and taking the next step in building the relationship. I think that products and companies that take time to figure out how their product fits within the acquaintance social model will see a larger coefficient of success than those who do not.
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