The Like Button:The Weak Tie In The Social Networks

As the thriving of cyber society, the modern people, especially the young generations put their social communication into the hands of the internet, which promotes the development of the Web 2.0. How to attract and sustain more and more users would to the first subject to the social network considering of the connectivity of the internet interpersonal relationships. The main social networks never stop at innovating, especially on interact mode improvement, to gain larger and larger relationship network. And the birth of like button is the result of the evolution of the social network function under the intense competition of social networks. Although the Like button gain a large fame in such a short time,but its influence on the quality of interpersonal relationships doesn't go with its popularity.This paper will first comment on the concept and development of the Like button,and analyze the new feature that it brings to the cyber interact and every process, based on the theory of weak tie, the 3 processes of technology development raised by Levinson and the semiology.Social network is built on both strong ties and weak ties, although strong ties cost users'most energy, while the broadness of interpersonal relationships is attribute to the strength of the weak ties. Therefore although the primary purpose of the like button is to promote the sharing of the common interests between the users, however, it contains a second function which complies with the needs for weak ties and thus adds to its vitality. And the view of this paper is that the like button is the reflection of essential internet relationship. Its popularity comes from the wide range of existence of the weak ties and it improves the strength and range of weak ties in reverse. The "weakness" makes the relationships built on Like button become of low quality. This paper will discuss the causes of the weakness and its effects on the users, contents, medium and the results.The Like button had worsen the quality of both strong ties and weak ties, but it still have its value. This paper will rise some ideas to promote the effects of the Like button and turn the weak to strong. We see the Like button achieve some fame but the relationships depending only on it will hurt the relationship badly, some every one of us should concentrate on the value of the like button and make it stronger under the trend of big data and its role of public opinion inspector.