ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the complex interplay between actors, ties, networks, and need, and explores how these factors can influence the potentiality of an online social network to fail. It presents a case study of a non-successful social networking initiative set within an existing Higher Education staff network to discuss how failure, and indeed success, is not the linear outcome of a specific initiative—such as the introduction of a social networking tool—but rather the product of various shifting and often hidden interacting factors. In studying the campus Yammer network, the chapter highlights the particular complexity of social networks in the earliest stages of their development, underlining the importance of social and bridging capital in the genesis phase of social networks, especially in relation to overlapping social network spaces. Closed networks emphasize the importance that structural factors can play in influencing the growth of social network site (SNS), such as this campus Yammer group.
