Are you in my network?

Article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/business/04network.html?_r=1

This article explores if the business strategies of cellphone networks have an impact on social networks. People who are in the same network talk more to each other, than people who don't have the same cellphone network.

The article explains how in informal friendship networks the frequency and duration of cellphone calls is lowered as soon as one of the participants switches to another network and that business acquaintances become "friends" through longer and more frequent phone calls when they are in the same cellphone network.

They refer to research on cellphone use being conducted at the Universities of Notre Dame and Michigan.

Here's the bottom line of the article: What was set up as a purely business strategy is having an unintentional social effect. It is dividing the people who share informal bonds and bringing together those who have formal networks of cellphone “friends.” Note that younger people use cell phones much more than the elderly, hence, it might not apply to everyone.
More thoughts from the Harvard Blog: "I had not thought about my own personal cellphone usage in this way, mainly because I am not checking how many minutes I have left. From a research standpoint, is your cellphone network/provider really powerful enough to influence the duration and frequency of interactions with people you do not consider your friends and only talk to on purely professional topics?"
Link: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/netgov/2007/08/are_you_in_my_network.html

That is a really interesting topic. This is a great response or support to those that believe that technology is causing relationships to be more superficial. In this case, is technology doing both? It is tough to say, I can't think of an incident myself where I have even noticed what network one of my friends uses. Either way, I believe this is good proof of market equilibrium. I know it sounds weird, but think about it this way; if you value your friendship enough with someone to pay the extra fee of calling them on a different network, it will happen. However, if you would rather not pay that price, you will call someone on your network and establish a friendship with them despite your lesser value for the relationship. That is, a equilibrium will always be reached between the time you spend talking to really good friends on different networks and those minutes spent talking to lesser friends on your network given a certain budget. As this article explains, those minutes will then dictate your social life! Market equilibrium drives your social life!

This is a very interesting article about the effects of technology on our everyday lifes. I agree that the combination of ones cellphone network and the value that two indviduals have for each other can eventually lead to an equilibrium of the amount of social interaction they have. However, this means that for two people of different networks to be treated equally, the person of the same network has to be valued less and and person in the different network has to be valued more. Therefore, although a social eqiulibrium is reached, this is still not the socially optimum equilibrium. In the socially ideal equilibrium, one should have more social interactions with the people they value more and less with the people they value less.
Therefore, I believe that this an example of how technology changes individual behavior. Whereas earlier, values one has for certain individuals used to be most important in choosing social relationships, convenience and ease of interaction in certian social networks has now become anoher important factor in social relashinships.

This is a website that has a blog post that talks about the value of technological networks.
http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2006/07/network-effect-multiplier-or-metcalfes.html

This blog post discusses the value of social networks, particularly technological networks such as a telephone network in which the value of calling people can be measured. In order to value a network, the actual telephone is not valued, but rather the service that is provided. Clearly, a telephone is useless if you can't call people. Therefore, if you have a large network, then a certain service is more valuable. "Metcalfe's Law" is a theory that the value of a network is proportional to the size of the network. This should in fact create an equilibrium in the market for cell phone services. You may have to pay extra to be able to communicate in a network such as Verizon, but this is a very large network, and if your friends and family have this network, then this purchase would have a value up to par. In this equilibrium, your value would affect calling people in different networks. This does support that the people who you communicate with is affected by the network you participate in, as well as your value for calling (or entering) different social networks.