Social Capital

Social capital is the term which explains the wealth we get from other people we communicate with and also that social capital gives us the connections we need. We get these connections through many social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and many others.
Within social capital you have strong and weak ties. Strong ties are the people you have on your network that are family, friends people you consider to be close to you people you can use for emotional support.
So weak ties are quite the complete opposite, people you don’t know very well or in some cases someone you don’t know at all which is the case when many people go through their friends on facebook. We tend to use the weak ties for resources for example we can find out about upcoming events due to one of these weak ties having the interests or hobbies as you. When going through my friends on facebook I tend to have mostly strong ties however I have to admit theirs probably 4-5 people I don’t have a clue who they are but just press confirm when they add me which is quite strange when I think about it because I would not go up to a random person in the street and start talking to them, but you feel more secure and safe whilst doing it on a social network because in some way that’s the whole point. Through weak ties we can get important information that would have been hard to get in the past.
Also within social capital we have bridging and bonding. Lets start of with bridging it refers to how you are linked to certain people through other people for example when I have had a friend request then look at mutual friends this relates to bridging that’s how some bonds are made through others. Also we get event links through other people in our network. Bonding is the people I have in my network that are the people close to me, people I would see in real life and would have no worries having a conversation with.
Maintained social capitals
Many people use or have used facebook and other social networks to connect with old friends or just to connect with people from the past for example a photo which you have been tagged in allows you to catch up with friends from past things that are so much harder to do with out the use of social networks.
I think the we gain so much from social capital and to some extent changes life’s with regards to finding people you have lost for some reason or another but you don’t just get information out of social networks you also put it in which makes you feel like you are helping someone. Robert Putman suggested that the better networks we are as a community the better it is for everybody. Overall I feel we gain a lot from social capital.