Zuckerberg once had a very incisive definition of social relations. He said, "The next era will be defined by today’s social networks and the depth of contact given to users. Our job is to find the best way for users to share themselves."
Zuckerberg’s point of view reflects the real core of social relations. With the rise of SNS, we pay more and more attention to the social relationship between people and the commercial value that can be created by this relationship. But justAs far as the connotation of social relations is concerned, it just reflects people’s inherent and essential needs, that is, to fully share themselves.
From the whole historical process, in primitive society, it is a social mechanism based on full sharing and barter exchange. In the second stage of human progress, it is based on private property rights, that is, the socio-economic system and corresponding culture based on exclusivism. In the current stage of mobile Internet, we have reason to think that the spirit of full sharing has revived, and people are beginning to share more and more. People naturally want to create something, show their creations to others, disclose their status to others, and talk about themselves and their families and their feelings.
In other words, in the era of mobile Internet, people gradually establish a common obligation by giving each other time and opinions. In this sense,People show their knowledge and express their living conditions by sharing themselves. The social relationship in the era of mobile Internet is established on such a social psychological basis.
With the development of mobile Internet, what will be the evolution of social relations centered on sharing oneself? What social relationship patterns will exist?
We divide social relationships into four categories according to the strength of relationships and whether they are online or not.The first category is online interaction of acquaintances, the second category is online interaction of strangers, the third category is offline interaction of strangers, and the fourth category is offline interaction of acquaintances.Let’s look at them one by one.
The first category is the virtual space of acquaintance relationship chain.
For example, we chat with our classmates and friends in QQ, exchange views and express our concerns, which is a typical interactive application in the acquaintance relationship chain. Through social networking sites such as Flickr, Facebook and Renren, we constantly share each other’s social information and update our current status, which is also a very typical acquaintance network. Even in many cases, there are many applications that help us to further strengthen the relationship between acquaintances, such as grabbing parking spaces and stealing vegetables, which have been popular among white-collar workers for a while. These are all interest-sharing applications based on strengthening acquaintance networks and strengthening strong relationship chains.
From the next development point of view, the development of virtual space of strong relationship chain of acquaintance network still has a very promising prospect. For example, acquaintances can share their experiences with their good friends almost in real time. In addition, the development of light games based on acquaintances will also be a very important direction. On the one hand, people satisfy their entertainment needs through games, and more importantly, they strengthen the acquaintance network, that is, the relationship strength in the strong relationship chain, to express their care for friends and relatives.
The second category is the social relationship model based on the weak relationship chain of strangers’ network and the correlation in virtual space.
There are quite a few such models, and the typical one is Weibo, which is talked about most now. Take Sina Weibo as an example. Among the 300 million registered users, most of the grassroots Weibo has become a fan of the star Weibo blogger, forming a very large follow-up network. People will come together quickly because of their concern for someone or a topic. Another example is some Internet models in the early development of social relations, such as some public chat rooms. Many large chat rooms were once very popular, and everyone often interacted or shared their interests in a chat room. In BBS, for example, it is still very vital until now. In large BBS communities like Tianya and Maopu, people can automatically group in different forums according to different interests and exchange information with strangers.
From the perspective of future development, we think that the evolution of virtual space of weak relationship chain will be very different from that of strong relationship chain. Because people don’t pay much attention to the emotional changes of strangers, what people really need is the expansion of interpersonal scope brought by weak relationship chains and the interest screening through weak relationship chains. After people’s interests are subdivided and focused, they can often further realize the exchange in business. For example, people can recommend some goods to each other or buy and sell second-hand goods in a weak relationship chain, and this kind of transaction, although it is a weak relationship chain, is also related and stronger than two complete strangers in relationship strength. Therefore, what this brings us is that, on the one hand, some weak relationship chains will be gradually introduced into the trading mechanism of e-commerce; On the other hand, e-commerce will further strengthen its layout in social relations. Recently, Taobao announced that it would go to SNS, which is a typical representative of such a trend.
The third category, the development of weak relationship chain of stranger network in real time and space.
In this category, in fact, the evolution of social relations is promising. This is manifested in several aspects. The first kind is the so-called flexible social interaction. People’s attention to a virtual theme in virtual space can be transformed into social relationships in reality. For example, in the real world, strangers can quickly exchange business cards and become fans with each other by shaking their mobile phones. In addition, users can use the positioning ability of the mobile Internet to list the netizens next to them by distance through their mobile phones, and they can greet them and start formal offline communication. Although it is difficult for people to build emotional care for each other in the weak relationship chain, the weak relationship chain can help people get more offline communication opportunities while sharing. In terms of mechanism, this is how elastic socialization developed.
The application of stranger network based on weak relationship chain in physical space-time means that people will use weak relationship chain for offline business value exchange based on personal connections. Based on the weak relationship chain, people’s trust relationship is obviously enhanced than that of complete strangers. Now, business models such as Dianping.com are completely based on the recommendation of strangers. The word-of-mouth recommendation based on weak relationship chain will greatly increase the credibility of this recommendation. The same is true for the use of contacts generated by this weak relationship chain, and more importantly, for subcontracting some tasks by using this weak relationship chain. The core mechanism of this category model lies in that on the one hand, the weak relationship chain enables a person to share his own scope greatly, on the other hand, the weak relationship chain is stronger than a complete stranger in reality after all, so this kind of business value exchange can be realized.
The fourth category is the application of acquaintance network and strong relationship chain in physical space.
This market space is actually relatively narrow, and it is destined to be a narrow application. Generally speaking, it will be a kind of application of circle type and club type. However, its main value is media value, such as kindergarten family groups and primary and secondary school family groups formed due to children, that is to say, strengthening the acquaintance network is actually valuable. Especially for acquaintances who are now linked by common interests, this behavior actually forms the main label to identify the community.
Generally speaking, the value of relationship is actually based on sharing economy, that is to say, sharing one’s own living conditions, one’s own information, one’s own interests and hobbies. The mode of sharing economy will gradually extend in the mobile Internet world, and even will eventually affect the whole physical society. In this process, various business model innovations will continue to surge and promote the sharing economy to mature.
[Author WeChat public account: Shen Tuo 2011 Author Sina Weibo: Shen Tuo 2011]
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