The strength of social networks - connecting people and enhancing relationship

One of the fundamental questions is how we can enhance our relationships with the people in our social networks. The combination of frequent engagement, deep interaction, and time spent together are what constitute to build a stronger relationship. With this knowledge in mind, it is not surprising to see many scholars claim that social networking sites may help us to re-connect some lost relationships, but has limited ability to strengthen an existing relationship. Surprisingly, from a survey we conducted, we found that most people who use Facebook or scholat.com (a scholar-oriented social networking site) claim that their relationships with some of their friends are improved, even though they do not have any in-depth or personal conversation with them and they can understand their friends better even without any communication. It contradicts with what we have known. It seems that a relationship can be improved with Facebook or scholat.com alone. In this paper, we try to analyze this finding and explain it using communication model and visualized analysis. We conclude how communication model changes as time goes and how it re-defines the meaning of communication.