Answering the question before, and relate it back to facebook.

Q1: Are online relationships narrowly specialized or broadly supportive?
Although topic can be specific but online groups tends to be supportive.
Even if online groups are not designed to be supportive, they tend to be.

Online or offline, weak ties are more apt than strong ties to link people with different social characteristics. The kind of people one know, is more important than the number of people you know. People were able to solve problem when they received suggestion online from people with wide range of social characteristics than when they received suggestion from a larger number of socially similar people.

Giving support in a virtual community arise when we consider that information exchanged online are between strangers, having only weak ties.

Virtual Community Affecting “real life” community?
-People phone each other although it is in the same neighbourhood.
-People do not really distinct neatly people only talk online,  or met in real life.
-Relationship is the important thing not the communication medium.
-Net facilates the relationship of weaker ties.
-More than supporting community ties, supplies companionship, supportiveness, information and sense of identity.

Strong ties = socially similar.
Weaker ties = distant acquitances.

Net helps to connect people develop new connection.
So it does increase diversity.

Are virtual communities “real” communities?

Computer mediated communication accelerates the ways in which people operates at the centers or partial, personal communities, switching rapidly and frequently between group of ties. People has enhanced ability to move between replationships. At the same time, more individualistic behavior means the weakening of the solidarity that comes from being in densely knit, loosely bounded group.

Virtual communities provide possibilities for reversing the trend to less contact with community members because it is easy to connect online with large numbers of people. Communities such as online chat groups stimulate communications, can talk casually like a barroom conversation and know the friends of their friends.

Net accelerates the trend of moving community interaction out of public spaces, intergrating society and foster social trust. The architecture facilates weak and strong ties arcoss different people, social links between group are socially and physically dispersed.