Vulnerability is just the precondition to what actually occurs, which is a transaction of authority. The lack of vulnerability is complete autonomy, which is defined as not accepting any authority besides oneself. It's the transaction of authority that builds the connection.
Similarity, proximity and resonance all seem to boil down to three aspects of presence: circumstantial, physical and intentional. If I ask if you know "where I'm at," that could be about my circumstances, location or intentions.
That cuts the list down to vulnerability (i.e. giving up some autonomy), presence, and a safe place (i.e. a sense of control). Very interesting.
Sure. Transactions of authority are those things we all know are there -- these stepping stones towards building a relationship.
Okay, first, "authority" has cultural baggage, because "authority" sounds formal and institutional and the thing you're supposed to question. But it also embraces opinion, influence and respect. It's the same word as trustedness, so if you want you could use that, but I'll stick with authority.
So on one side, there is some measure of vulnerability, as you said. It could be very small, like asking a question. It's anything that contradicts the thesis that "I know what's right, I can do it and I don't need you." Asking a question, asking for help, offering an opinion for validation, revealing one's own flaws or willingly showing incompetence are all acts which negate that thesis.
On the other side, there needs to be a willingness to accept the truthfulness of the transaction and the responsibility of bearing the costs involved in completing the transaction. If it's something I can do that makes me feel good about myself, helps someone I love and doesn't cost me much, I am going to be thrilled to do it. If it's someone I don't know asking me to go buy booze for them in a 7-Eleven with a $100 bill, not so much.
But trust is the number one factor, and the first step up in trust is huge. Going from zero (complete stranger) to ten (decent person I don't know) is a lot easier than going from ten to twenty. That's why first impression, and particularly the first transaction of authority, is huge, because if you go to negative ten first, you are in a serious hole. If you're a website, that's when the user goes for the back button anyway.
Understanding how to build a relationship is understanding how and when to handle these transactions of authority. This is why rejection therapy is a useful exercise -- the one who gets rejected knows how far to jump next time better than the one who never skips a step.
This also provides a framework for understanding what are otherwise "social hacks" as constructive, proper and polite ways to interact. It's useful to know that "can I cut in line so I can make some copies" is not just exploiting some neurobug but offering a different transaction -- Can I offer you the status of "someone who helped me out when I was unable to do something all by myself" in exchange for a cut in line?
You can even argue Ben Franklin was being polite rather than a jerk when he asked to borrow a book from someone he wanted to build a relationship with. Even though he didn't really care about the book, and it was a tactic, he was offering a polite transaction and was building a friendly relationship, which he at least always saw as a greater good. I'm not sure about that one, but you can at least see the broader context this way.
Transactions of authority are what build a relationship not just between two people but in communities. Similarity is nice, but even small transactions of authority are better.
Thank you for the encouragement. It's just my own way of making sense of the world but I hadn't actually fleshed it out in writing before. I do have a blog that I recently rebooted at Posterous but I tend to talk on HN much more than I blog!
i would like to formally encourage you to express your ideas in a blog post. you may find it to be useful to yourself and others would certainly benefit from it. i know your perspective would certainly inform my cognitive models.
Leave it to geeks to make something as amazing as "clicking with another person," especially someone of the opposite sex, seem so technical and linear.
I think of it as one of those things that a lot of people get intuitively, but some people have to have explained to them. You can become good at just about anything in life given enough effort, it's just that we usually prefer to play to our strengths instead of making things hard on ourselves. So if you're a terrible artist, you could (a) take years of classes, learn a bunch of techniques, and eventually be able to draw well, or (b) pick another hobby. If the thing you're bad at is social interaction though, (b) is probably not an attractive option. I feel the same way each time one of these "fashion for hackers" posts shows up. It's kind of funny/sad if it's explaining something that you already get, but for those that don't get it, it's surely nice to have it laid out in painstaking detail. Because sometimes option (b) just sucks.
Everything is technical, or at least amenable to technical explanation. Geeks of past eras similarly burst bubbles like "why is the sky so blue", "why are sunsets all pink and colorful like that", and "what the fuck is up with magnets?". On the other hand, geeks were able to outright invent even more magic, like this weird aluminum box with buttons on it that makes other people's opinions appear on a glass surface!
I am not sure if I agree with the 'physical proximity' piece. You can create that same level of trust and group work environment in virtual office environment through the use of technology (IM, video conf, emails, calls). The growth in telecommuters have created a need for stellar tools to help people collaborate and create bonds even when they are not physically close to each other.
I evidently explained that poorly. The idea was that if you're going to a meeting in a building at work, then you might arrive early. You might spend a few minutes chatting with a coworker who also arrived early. This "irrelevant" social chatter helps build a relationship, and might be less likely to occur if you're telecommuting, because then your conversations might be forced to be purposeful. You no longer can transfer information over casual watercooler breaks.
I work remotely for a very distributed organization (Mozilla), and still get a lot of informal interaction. The key is to have several different communication venues with different standards and expectations. Discussion in Bugzilla is fairly technical and work-oriented. Discussion on mailing lists allows for more advocacy. IRC allows for more chatty, non-work-related talk, and some IRC channels have different rules than others. We also use Twitter, private email, internal web forums, internal and external wikis, Rypple, etc...
I think that's exactly the point: while those myriad of technologies allow you to mitigate some of the downsides of distance, they still don't have the accidental factor that random hallway conversations have. I can walk by someone having a cool conversation in the break room and join in. I can have lunch with my coworkers and seamsly switch back forth between work discussions and personal ones. And I don't have to follow anything, check any mailboxes, or type any responses arbitrarily limited to a certain number of characters.
"But there are specific factors, or accelerators, that trigger such connections -- and there are three that Facebook is seriously lacking: Physical proximity, vulnerability and a clearly defined community."
He goes on to discuss how and why Facebook lacks each of the three.
Similarity, proximity and resonance all seem to boil down to three aspects of presence: circumstantial, physical and intentional. If I ask if you know "where I'm at," that could be about my circumstances, location or intentions.
That cuts the list down to vulnerability (i.e. giving up some autonomy), presence, and a safe place (i.e. a sense of control). Very interesting.