I was just reading an extract from “Grouped” by Paul Adams and found myself internally nodding my head in agreement to many of his points. His main argument is that the people who influence you most, both online and offline, are your close friends, because of credibility and trust. He calls these your strong ties. This seems intuitive – of course you would trust your best friend rather than a stranger on the street.
Source: Grouped by Paul Adams
However, as Paul Adams later outlines in his book, it is your weak ties that may be more knowledge, or that you can learn the most from. I have heard this argument from many sources, and I agree. This is because your friends tend to have the same interests as you, and may come from the same background, or country as you, and therefore might be sharing and liking posts that contain information you already know. On the other hand, weak ties are likely to be more different to you, have different hobbies and different social circles, and may be able to provide you with rich new information. But since they are your weak ties, you may trust them less.
But hold on a minute. Why should you trust them less, and be less influenced by them? Maybe you aspire to be like some of them because of a certain job or degree they have, or maybe you like their sense of fashion and trust the fashion articles they share! As long as you have an idea of who the associate/useful contact/fun friend is, I would argue that you can be smart enough to decide whether what they are sharing is trustworthy, especially if it’s an article from a well-known news source. If you can’t judge that, maybe you shouldn’t be connected with them on social media.