Badges of Friendship: Social Influence and Badge Acquisition on Stack Overflow

Badges can provide a number of advantages to networked, self-directed learners, including making visible social networks of support and direction. If badges do allow for this, we would expect to see badge acquisition to be predicted by the presence of a particular badge among a learner's social connections. In examining the badges and "tags" used on the question-and-answer site Stack Overflow. We find that the more general badges are closely related to tenure on the site, while the numerous "tag" badges provide for more socially-determined differentiation.