The Russian Doll of Word of Mouth - A 5 Level Friendship Ladder

A friend is not always a friend...at least not in word of mouth terms.

In this post, we've identified 5 levels of friendship within an average person's social circle and a smart calculation on averages based on our own experience and industry research.

Our Friendship Ladder (or Social Network Russian Doll if you prefer) is broken done by five levels of peer contact and kinship, frequently determined by one's emotional connection, level of intimacy and frequency of contact with the different rungs of friends.

Understanding peer connections is critical to word of mouth amplification based on two important social network maxims - Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law. The former states that the value of the network is the approximately the square of the number of users. The latter states that when you enable connections between nodes on the network to take place, the value of the network grows exponentially.

So here are the five rungs to your social ladder - how do you stack up?

CONFIDANTS (Average Size: 2)- the highest level, and according to a study by Duke/U/ of Arizona, one that continues to shrink each year - these are the only people who you discuss your most important personal matters with (i.e. spouse, parent, lifelong friend)

INNER SANCTUM (Average size:4) - according to an MSN Messenger study, people who are one rung outside of confidant that you have frequent and very friendly contact with - they are part of your entourage  (i.e. best school friends, close knit co-worker, mentor, drinking buddy)

STRONG TIES (Average Size 29) - still considered strong friends but either lack of level of intimacy, background, frequency of contact or reciprocity associated with the other two rungs (i.e. close friends that live in different cities, sibling relationships, neighbours, strongly affiliated members of a group or team)

WEAK TIES (Average Size: 165) - you would still consider friend but may be reticent or feel awkward or uncomfortable inviting them to your house for dinner, revealing personal opinions or spending too much time with them (i.e. member on your work team, neighborhood peer, industry colleague) based on a  fear of emotional time and investment required, however these people play exceptionally strong roles in the spreading of information through social networks, principally because weak tie's social circles are less overlapping, they offer a bridge to many different members than your social circles and potentially an appetite for more novel information (evidence - Mark Granovetter's study "Getting a Job," - 56 percent of people find jobs through personal connections, the majority through their acquaintances not friends).

DRIFTERS (Average Size: 200) - once considered in one of the above categories or a recent friend not yet part of the top rungs of the friendship ladder, remain on the outside circle based on some type of disconnection - infrequently visited or communicated with, low emotional resonance (even if there is regret about it), short length of friendship, low reciprocal benefits or dissonant value set - will likely remain as a drifter or part of a larger set of acquaintances (i.e. high school friend, previous workplace team member)

As an imperative of word of mouth  activity, it's paramount to attract people into programs and communities with high intimacy and quantity of friends, particularly those in the top 4 rungs.

In our experience, the composition of rungs is frequently determined by a number of factors:

- gender - women frequently have deeper, more intimate circles of friends than men

- age - younger people have more active top rungs, older people have more drifters  that they lose contact with given competing challenges for time and interest

- culture - Asian and Latin cultures tend to have larger social circles overall than AngloSaxon cultures

- motivation - some people are more hardwired for social connection , see Gladwell's Connector test

- life change - people tend to have more active rungs when experiencing major life changes - graduating, moving out, weddings, moving neighborhoods, having children

- employment - as identified by our last post, different types of careers/jobs require different types of interpersonal contact, being employed vs. not employed increases amount of contact each day (note: an interesting study of working vs. non-working moms word of mouth)

- group membership - the more affiliations, the more friends

- extroversion/introversion - extroverts have more friends overall

- celebrity factor - remember Paris Hilton's hacked cell phone and over 500 of her angriest A and B-list friends

- Agent Wildfire's 8 traits of a word of mouth influencer - ACTIVES-P

This area fascinates us given our line of work and given what the last decade of digital life has affected. So please add to the bank of work, we'd love to hear about other studies of social networks, particularly getting a handle on how different online social networks view this question.