This leads to a sense of belonging, more trust and solidarity among each other.

So Substack has an editorial policy, but no accountability. And they have terms of service, but no enforcement.

The individual is helpless socially, if left by himself. Even the association of the members of one's own family fails to satisfied that desire which every normal individual has of being with his fellows, of being a part of a larger group than the family. If he comes into contact with his neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient for the substantial improvement of life in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors. First, then, there must be an accumulation of community social capital. Such accumulation may be effected by means of public entertainments, picnics, and a variety of other community gatherings. When the people of a given community have become acquainted with one another and have formed a habit of coming together occasionally for entertainment, social intercourse, and personal enjoyment, then by skillful leadership this social capital may easily be directed towards the general improvement of the community well-being.

Think of this essay as a series of strongly held hypotheses; without access to the types of data which i’m not even sure exists, it’s difficult to be definitive. As ever, my wise readers will add or push back as they always do.

The same way many social networks track keystone metrics like time to X followers, they should track the ROI on posts for new users. It's likely a leading metric that governs retention or churn. It’s useful as an investor, or even as a curious onlooker to test a social networks by posting varied content from test accounts to gauge the efficiency and fairness of the distribution algorithm.

Social capital is, in many ways, a leading indicator of financial capital, and so its nature bears greater scrutiny. Not only is it good investment or business practice, but analyzing social capital dynamics can help to explain all sorts of online behavior that would otherwise seem irrational.

Mutual aid societies were built on the razed foundations of the old  guilds, and cooperatives and mass political parties then drew on the  experience of the mutual aid societies."

Johnson’s book (lively and well sourced –  highly recommended) transcends the cliche of the individual innovator  and shows the ways in which innovation depends on a form of social  capital — the networks of people and ideas that innovators learn from  and build upon.

That so much social capital for the young comes in the form of followers, likes, and comments from peers and strangers shouldn't lessen its value.

Maintenance of existing social capital stores is often a more efficient use of time than fighting to earn more on a new social network given the ease of just earning interest on your sizeable status reserves. That's just math, especially once you factor in loss aversion.

Most of these near clones have and will fail. The reason that matching the basic proof of work hurdle of an Status as a Service incumbent fails is that it generally duplicates the status game that already exists. By definition, if the proof of work is the same, you're not really creating a new status ladder game, and so there isn't a real compelling reason to switch when the new network really has no one in it.

graph-based social capital allocation mechanisms can suffer from runaway winner-take-all effects. In essence, some networks reward those who gain a lot of followers early on with so much added exposure that they continue to gain more followers than other users, regardless of whether they've earned it through the quality of their posts. One hypothesis on why social networks tend to lose heat at scale is that this type of old money can't be cleared out, and new money loses the incentive to play the game.

I can still remember posting the same photos to Flickr and Instagram for a while and seeing how quickly the latter passed the former in feedback. If I were an investor or even an employee, I might have something like a representative basket of content that I'd post from various test accounts on different social media networks just to track social capital interest rates and liquidity among the various services.

It's true that as more people join a network, more social capital is up for grabs in the aggregate. However, in general, if you come to a social network later, unless you bring incredible exogenous social capital (Taylor Swift can join any social network on the planet and collect a massive following immediately), the competition for attention is going to be more intense than it was in the beginning. Everyone has more of an understanding of how the game works so the competition is stiffer.

[An aside about exogenous social capital: you might complain that your tweets are more interesting and grammatical than those of, say, Donald Trump (you're probably right!). Or that your photos are better composed and more interesting at a deep level of photographic craft than those of Kim Kardashian. The difference is, they bring a massive supply of exogenous pre-existing social capital from another status game, the fame game, to every table, and some forms of social capital transfer quite well across platforms. Generalized fame is one of them. More specific forms of fame or talent might not retain their value as easily: you might follow Paul Krugman on Twitter, for example, but not have any interest in his Instagram account. I don't know if he has one, but I probably wouldn't follow it if he did, sorry Paul, it’s nothing personal.]

While you can outsource Bitcoin mining to a computer, people still mine for social capital on social networks largely through their own blood, sweat, and tears.

The creation of a successful status game is so mysterious that it often smacks of alchemy. For that reason, entrepreneurs who succeed in this space are thought of us a sort of shaman, perhaps because most investors are middle-aged white men who are already so high status they haven't the first idea why people would seek virtual status

Understanding Monetary Premiums in Programmable Value Networks

DFINITY, Near, Polkadot

, it would, but because their networks do not often cross, the gap between social connectedness of the rich and the poor continues to grow

social capital offline only helps those who currently have high levels of economic and symbolic capital.

social ties, is a significant reason. His children, by no virtue of their own but solely because of their social ties with him, are also in positions of high power and prestige and have astronomical amounts of money.

remote connections comprise a social network that offers a degree of social capital without some of the demands that go along with social networks in closer quarters.

encourage students to activate their ties

How would their analysis of social networks and social capital change if they were here today?

Along these lines, I would argue that it is difficult to measure online participation with social capital. An individual might use digital devices to play Solitaire. Alternatively, the individual might be heavily involved in moderating a Dancing with the Stars community forum or enjoy playing a massively multiplayer online game that requires group coordination.

who we associate with, and understanding the impact of those relationships increases

friend’s friend’s friend’s

At times, however, friendship can be a source of jealousy and competition. According to a psychological theory called the self-evaluation maintenance model, we tend to be happy for our friends' success, but only if the success is not in a domain that is also important to us, and only if the friend is not too close. If our friends' successes threaten our own self-esteem, we may distance ourselves from them or even try to sabotage them. Friendship can also be a liability if we base our self-worth on our friends’ approval: For individuals high in friendship-contingent self-esteem, depending too much on friends can make our self-esteem unstable and increase symptoms of depression. Building social capital with friends. How can we make the most of our friendships? One approach is to be mindful of the subtle ways that jealousy can erode friendship and to find ways to reframe friends’ potentially threatening successes in a way that highlights shared benefits (e.g., your friend might be able to help you improve and reach your own goals) and that involves taking your friends’ perspective. Friends need our support and encouragement just as much when they are up as when they are down, according to research.

In short, it pays to be a giver on social media, not just a lurker or a taker.

I’m intrigued by the notion that social networks could eventually replace our currency. If economic growth lives up to the hype, we’ll all live like the rich someday, so why not print our own money, too?

The conservative influence of property does not, however, depend on primogeniture or even inheritance -- features that gave property a valuable role in Burke's political system as well as in the political theories advanced by Hegel and Plato. n11 Within a single lifetime, property tends to make the property owner more risk-averse. This aversion applies both to public decisions [*291] affecting property, such as taxes, and to personal decisions that might diminish one's property, such as investment strategies and career choices. Inheritance and capital appreciation are only additional characteristics of traditional notions of property that tend to stabilize social stratification.