Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Social Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socnet

Making friends and communicating on Facebook: Implications for the

access to social capital
Angela Bohn a,c,∗ , Christian Buchta b,c , Kurt Hornik a,c , Patrick Mair a,c,d
a
Institute for Statistics and Mathematics, Austria
b
Institute for Service Marketing and Tourism, Austria
c
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Augasse 2-4, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
d
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: In this paper, we explore the dynamics of access to social capital on Facebook. Existing approaches to
Facebook network-based social capital measures are adapted to the case of Facebook and applied to the friendship
Social capital and communication data of 438,851 users. These measures are correlated to user data in order to identify
Friendship
advantageous behavior for optimizing the possible access to social capital. We find that the access to social
Communication
capital on Facebook is primarily based on a reasonable amount of active communication. Exaggerated
Posting behavior
Homophily friending and posting behavior can deteriorate the access to social capital. Furthermore, we investigate
which kinds of posts are most advantageous as well as questions of homophily based on social capital.
© 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction
The increasing importance of SNSs for maintaining our social
relations cannot be neglected. Users appreciate the possibility to
communicate in an often asymmetric way with many hundreds of
“friends” or “followers”. On the one hand, the flood of information
can be challenging, on the other hand, this way to communicate is
said to reduce the effort to build and use social capital.
What is social capital? Lin (2002) summarized the perceptions
of influential scholars in the field by “investment in social rela-
tions with expected returns in the marketplace”. These investments
and returns occur in, for example, the form of knowledge, trends,
ideas, news, and opinions. Sociological literature distinguishes two
types of social capital: bridging and bonding social capital (Putnam,
2001). Bonding social capital refers to benefits arising from close
relations inside of cohesive groups, while bridging social capital is
built between groups. Many recent studies are concerned with the
question of whether the new communication media arising from
the Internet, and especially from SNSs, increase the two types of
social capital. Literature seems to agree that the use of Facebook and
other social media is positively correlated with bridging social cap-
ital (Ellison et al., 2007; Shah et al., 2012; Steinfield et al., 2008) and
Abbreviations: API, application programming interface; app, application (soft-
ware); SNS, social networking sites.
∗ Corresponding author at: Vienna University of Economics and Business,
Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria. Tel.: +49 176 37671750.
E-mail addresses: angela.bohn@gmail.com (A. Bohn), christian.buchta@wu.ac.at
(C. Buchta), kurt.hornik@wu.ac.at (K. Hornik), patrick.mair@wu.ac.at (P. Mair).
an increase of the number of weak ties (Donath and Boyd, 2004).
Moreover, Steinfield et al. (2008) found on the basis of a longitudi-
nal analysis that Facebook use led to bridging social capital rather
than the other way around. Burke et al. (2011) pointed out that
receiving messages from Facebook friends contributes to bridging
social capital, while other activities on Facebook do not. However,
it is unclear whether bonding social capital is boosted by Facebook
use (Ellison et al., 2007, 2011; Vitak et al., 2011). Both types of social
capital are not affected by online relations to strangers (Ellison et al.,
2011). SNSs seem to be most valuable to people with lower self-
esteem, weaker social capabilities, or lower life satisfaction (Burke
et al., 2011; Ellison et al., 2007; Steinfield et al., 2008).
The cited articles measured social capital by means of sur-
veys with questions like “I am interested in what goes on at [my
community]” and “[my community] is a good place to be”. Social
network research usually follows a sociometric approach: Burt
(1995) contributed one of the major social network theories related
to social capital. He argued that individuals could build social capi-
tal by bridging missing ties between subnetworks (called structural
holes). By adopting the position of a broker, the actor could access
and control the information flow between the two otherwise sepa-
rated groups, which increases its attractiveness for other actors in
the network. Besides brokerage, social capital can also be deter-
mined by centrality, homophily, and density measures and the
reciprocity of relationships (Monge and Contractor, 2003; Borgatti
et al., 1998; Burt, 2000; Lin, 1999). In this paper, we will undertake a
sociometric approach to measure the possible access to social cap-
ital on Facebook. We argue that although the number of friends
might be one ingredient of social capital, the actual communi-
cation ties allow for much more valuable insights. Therefore, we

0378-8733/$ – see front matter © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2013.11.003
30 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
develop sociometric measures capturing the access to social capi-
tal adapted to the Facebook communication features. We propose
five hypotheses based on sociological, psychological, and social net-
work theories concerning factors influencing the access to social
capital on Facebook. Furthermore, we use regression models to
reveal the most important main effects and possible interactions
between predictors.
2. Relevant communication features on Facebook
The subsequent sections require some knowledge about rel-
evant Facebook functionalities that we briefly review here: In
essence, the purpose of Facebook from a user perspective is to
become virtual friends with other users, to communicate with
them, and to stay informed about their activities and interests.
Friendships are established when a user sends a friend request to
another user and the latter accepts the request. From this point,
friends can usually read each others’ “posts”. Posts are unaddressed
text messages, possibly enriched by photos or videos, that can
be commented on and “liked” (by clicking a “like”-button). They
appear on the users’ “news feeds”, a collection of friends’ posts
and notifications of other activities of friends (e.g. when someone
changed his/her profile picture). Users can post on their own “walls”
or on their friends’. Walls show all posts and notifications related
to a certain user (whereas news feeds show posts of all of a user’s
friends). Users can also tag friends in their posts. This way, the post
does not only appear on the user’s wall, but also on the tagged per-
son’s wall. Friends’ privacy settings and filter options set by the user
determine which posts and notifications appear on news feeds and
walls.
3. Measuring the access to social capital on Facebook
Social capital consists in the exchange of knowledge, trends,
ideas, news, and opinions. As opposed to economic capital (money
and goods) that is exchanged by means of physical transportation
or bank transfers, social capital is exchanged through communica-
tion. In a network of bank transfers we can evaluate the financial
power and stability of institutions based on their structural posi-
tion. In a network of communication ties we can measure the ability
of members to access (and provide) the various forms of social
capital. This is independent of the question of whether persons
make use of their social capital (e.g. whether they actually apply
for the job they heard about; Lin (1999)). However, the ability to
access social capital is manifest. In contrast, the non-existence of
communication ties makes it impossible to access social capital.
Naturally, the existence of a communication tie does not nec-
essarily mean that social capital has been transferred. However,
seemingly unimportant chats commonly serve to prepare for the
transfer of social capital in the future (Sobel, 2002). Previous stud-
ies, such as Valenzuela et al. (2009) confirmed that there is social
capital on Facebook in terms of life satisfaction, trust, and partici-
pation.
Social structure is not equal to social capital. Instead, social cap-
ital is rather derived from social structure, as pointed out by Portes
(1998), or, as formulated by Adler and Kwon (2002), “social capital
is the resource available to actors as a function of their location in
the structure of their social relations”. A very similar definition was
proposed by XXXX. Based on this idea, a number of appropriate
measures were summarized by Borgatti et al. (1998) and further
theoretical considerations were elaborated by Burt (2000) and Lin
(1999, 2002). In summary, social network literature proposed two
opposing theories about the structures and measurement of social
capital:
• The network closure argument, elaborated by Coleman (1988),
for example, suggests that a strong interlocking of entities in
a dense network created social capital. This perception corre-
sponds to bonding social capital. A number of arguments support
this viewpoint: first, as the information quality decreases with the
path length, direct connections are most adequate to deliver reli-
able information. Second, direct connections favor the creativity
output of a network, which make this organizational structure
adequate for many types of corporate- or leisure-related goals.
Third, a dense network is more stable against node removals. That
is, the risk of loosing the investment in relationships is diversi-
fied. Forth, nobody can escape the social control and sanctions
of peers, which builds trust. Network measures related to this
approach include degree, density, closeness, and page rank, for
example.
• Burt (1995) argued that bridging structural holes was a recipe for
building social capital. This concept is related to bridging social
capital. The structural holes idea was developed in the context
of economic theory. Burt argues that persons in bridging pos-
itions could benefit from competitive advantages by accessing
and controlling the information flow between two otherwise
unconnected groups. While information in cohesive groups is
usually redundant, bridging positions allow for the reception
of different information. Furthermore, the broker can decide to
establish further contacts between groups and help both of them
to benefit from collaboration. Both parties will attribute those
benefits to the broker. These ideas can easily be transferred to
the context of friendship networks. Betweenness is commonly
used as a measure for bridging positions.
The two structures are opposing because they can never coexist
on the same node set. There are no structural holes in a closed net-
work. However, both structures can appear on different node sets
in the same network. Everyone’s ego network is probably char-
acterized by dense parts representing close family, friends, and
coworkers as well as by some contacts hardly knowing anyone else
in the network. For this reason we calculate the following meas-
ures capturing the access to both types of social capital. All those
measures are based on communication networks (where edges
represent the number of likes and comments), not on friendship
networks.
• Access to rather bonding-like social capital
– Reactions R: the number of likes and comments that ego
received on his or her posts. This measure is based on the con-
cept of indegree, a frequently used measure of social capital.
We presume that social capital is the larger the more reactions
on posts someone receives. Likes and comments persons con-
tributed to their own posts are ignored. The measure of R is
defined on [0, ∞).
• Access to bridging social capital
– Betweenness B is the share of shortest paths (geodesics) going
through the focal node: B(i) = (gj,k (i))/(gj,k ) where i is the focal
node, gj,k is the number of geodesics between node j and node
k (two of i’s friends) and gj,k (i) is the number of geodesics
between j to k going through i. B(i) is the higher the more
structural holes are bridged by i. B is defined on [0, 1].
Sometimes, the reciprocity of ties is used as a dimension of social
capital (see e.g. Monge and Contractor, 2003). The idea is to consider
the direction of ties as clearly asymmetric relations can indicate
outstanding popularity or inferior social positions. We subscribe
to this viewpoint and we operationalize it on the basis of ratios of
outgoing and incoming ties.
 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
• Reciprocity
– Reciprocity RC: this measure captures the ratio of incoming
and outgoing ties averaged over all friends. RC is defined on [0,
∞).
4. Hypotheses
4.1. Hypothesis 1: the access to social capital improves with the
number of friends
In many studies and theoretical frameworks, the number of
friends, or more generally the ego-network size, is used as one
dimension – or the only dimension – of social capital (Borgatti
et al., 1998; La Due Lake and Huckfeldt, 1998) and related
concepts like social attractiveness (Walther et al., 2008), popu-
larity (Cha et al., 2010; Harrigan et al., 2012; Szell and Thurner,
2010; Tom Tong et al., 2008), and influence (Trusov et al., 2010;
Xiong et al., 2012). However, network sizes of several hundreds
or thousands of friends indicate that the notion of friend was
extended and has become somewhat unclear in the context of
SNSs. As Tom Tong et al. (2008) argues, the notion of online
friend can comprise different kinds of friendship. While litera-
ture agrees that Facebook favors the transformation of latent to
weak ties (Ellison et al., 2011) as well as the maintenance and
strengthening of weak ties (Donath and Boyd, 2004), it is unclear
whether the number of close friends has increased due to the
new communication technologies. Dunbar (1992) found that the
number of persons we can maintain stable relationships with
(Dunbar’s number) is between 100 and 230 and usually around
150 due to limitations of the human brain. This number does
not seem to have increased with the emergence of the Inter-
net (Dunbar, 2012). In contrast, Donath and Boyd (2004) found
that SNSs allow for the maintenance of a larger number of close
friends.
The vague notion of online friend raises the question of whether
its number is still appropriate when defining social capital. There-
fore, another approach consists in investigating the influence of
actual friends on social capital. Ellison et al. (2011) showed on
the basis of a linear model that there is a slightly positive rela-
tionship between the number of “actual friends” (respondents
stated how many of their Facebook friends were actual friends)
and bridging social capital. However, when the squared num-
ber of actual of friends was used as a predictor, this relationship
turned curvilinear with a maximum at around 500 friends. The
authors concluded that friends responded negatively to exag-
gerated friending behavior. Kleck et al. (2007), Tom Tong et al.
(2008), and Utz (2010) came to similar results when inves-
tigating the relationship between the number of friends and
popularity.
The social enhancement theory postulates that persons hav-
ing many offline ties tend to maintain many online relations and
vice versa. This viewpoint is supported by, for example, Birnie and
Horvath (2002) and Mesch and Talmud (2006). The social compen-
sation theory attributes the high online communication activity of
certain persons to their lack of offline social relations. This con-
tradicts the social enhancement theory, however, evidence could
be found for both of them depending on personal characteristics
like extraversion, self-esteem, and loneliness (Bonetti et al., 2010;
Valkenburg and Peter, 2007; Zywica and Danowski, 2008). In the
context of this paper, we consider the network size as a possi-
ble predictor but not a dimension of access to social capital. In
line with prior findings mostly supporting the presumption that
social capital is positively associated with network size we propose
Hypothesis 1a:
31
H1a: The access to social capital improves with the number of
friends.
Furthermore, we assume that the number of communication
partners serves as a better predictor for the access to social
capital than the number of friends. Therefore we formulate
Hypothesis 1b:
H1b: The access to social capital improves with the number of
communication partners.
4.2. Hypothesis 2: there is a relationship between the posting
frequency and the access to social capital
According to Simmel (1908), the depth of today’s differentiated
friendships depends on the extent to which we are willing to share
information about ourselves. Can this be translated to the online
world into “the more I post, the more social capital I am going to
build”? Indeed, literature on SNSs found that self-disclosure favors
relational closeness, intimacy, well-being, as well as perceived
bridging and bonding social capital (Ko and Kuo, 2009; Ledbetter
et al., 2011; Rau et al., 2008; Stutzman et al., 2012) unless the con-
tent of posts is highly negative (Forest and Wood, 2012). Forest and
Wood (2012) also stated that users with low self-esteem had diffi-
culties to turn their post into social capital. Accordingly, they post
less frequently (Shim et al., 2008). Furthermore, Christofides et al.
(2009) found that the need for popularity favors self-disclosure.
In contrast, Burke et al. (2011) found that (incoming) private
messages on Facebook are positively correlated to bridging social
capital, while other communication media, especially “broadcast-
ing” (unaddressed posting) are not. What is more, Schoendienst and
Linh (2011) found no significant relationship between the post-
ing frequency and the quantity of feedback on posts. Sibona and
Walczak (2011) found that respondents were more likely to dis-
solve an online friendship when someone posts too much. They
conclude that very high posting frequencies are responded to nega-
tively by friends, as with exaggerated friending behavior (discussed
above).
Based on prior studies, it is unclear whether the posting fre-
quency influences social capital, and if so, in which direction. We
think that this lack of clarity could be due to the fact that there is
a bell-shaped relationship between posting frequency and social
capital, such that social capital increases up to a certain frequency
and then decreases beyond this level.
H2: There is a relationship between the posting frequency and
the access to social capital.
4.3. Hypothesis 3: the access to social capital improves with the
share of intentional posts
On Facebook, not every message that friends can read on their
news feeds was created intentionally by the concerned user. In
contrast, Facebook formulates automatic notifications to inform
friends about a user’s activity (e.g. “[Your friend] changed his/her
profile picture”). We refer to these notifications as automatic posts,
whereas intentional posts are created by the user on purpose, like
status posts.
Existing literature did not take automatic posts into account but
focused on intentional posts. Barash et al. (2010), for example, cat-
egorized posts based on the impression they made on friends. They
found that entertaining posts had the highest probability of receiv-
ing at least one positive comment and depressing posts had most
negative comments. Solely Burke et al. (2011) suggested that the
social capital on Facebook does not only depend on the intensity
of use but also on the features used. However, they did not take
automatic posts into account.
32 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
Compared to intentional posts, automatic posts display less evi-
dence of commitment to the community. Therefore, we think that
the access to social capital improves with the share of intentional
posts.
H3: The access to social capital improves with the share of inten-
tional posts.
4.4. Hypothesis 4: the access to social capital improves with the
number of outgoing addressed communication ties
Hypothesis 2 was concerned with the influence of unaddressed
posts on the access to social capital, that is, posts on someone’s own
wall. This hypothesis addresses the question of whether addressed
communication ties, like comments, likes, and tagging friends in
posts, contribute to the access to social capital. According to the
social balance theory (XXXX), actors feel comfortable when their
(positive or negative) ties are reciprocated. Thus, the question is:
“Can I use people’s need for reciprocation to increase my social
capital by liking and commenting their content?” Apart from this
need, mutual ties can also be due to truly reciprocated friendships
and shared interests, of course.
Again, we found that literature has not investigated these ques-
tions so far. Patterns of user interaction have been examined by
Golder et al. (2007), Viswanath et al. (2009), and Wilson et al.
(2009), for example, but authors drew no conclusions about the
formation of social capital.
Friends probably feels more involved when addressed person-
ally. Therefore, we formulate the following hypothesis:
H4: The access to social capital improves with the number of
outgoing addressed communication ties.
4.5. Hypothesis 5: a user’s access to social capital increases with
the access to social capital of his or her friends
Homophily is one of the most central theses in SNA. It states
that actors with similar attributes have a higher probability of tie
formation than actors with different attributes. Homophily was
found in Facebook relationships concerning race, gender, age, and
nationality (Ugander et al., 2011; Wimmer and Lewis, 2010) and
also in other online communities (Bisgin et al., 2012; Leskovec
and Horvitz, 2008; Mazur and Richards, 2011; Thelwall, 2009,
2010). Likewise, Facebook literature suggests that homophily exists
based on behavioral attributes and personality traits: Ugander
et al. (2011) found a clear degree assortativity in friend networks.
That is, users with many friends tend to be tied to equally socia-
ble people. Utz (2010) came to the conclusion that the perceived
extraversion of target persons was positively correlated with the
perceived extraversion of friends. According to Thelwall (2010),
users of MySpace tend to make friends with persons who have
similar levels of public emotion expression. In contrast, interest-
based homophily seems to play only a secondary role (Bisgin et al.,
2012).
Homophily based on social capital might be caused by two pos-
sible mechanisms: one mechanism might reflect the true nature of
homophily in the sense that two persons with similar personalities
and habits happen to be tied regardless of any strategic intentions.
In contrast, some users might aim to increase their social capital
by carefully allocating their ties and hoping that the social capital
of their friends rubs off on them. Both mechanisms can lead to the
same network structures.
From what we can learn from literature, it seems probable that
homophily based on social capital can be observed:
H5: A user’s access to social capital increases with the access to
social capital of his or her friends.
5. Facebook data
In all scientific projects analyzing Facebook data, data collection
was a major challenge. One frequent approach is to crawl profiles
(Catanese et al., 2012, 2011; Gjoka et al., 2011, 2011, 2011; Kurant
et al., 2011; Mislove et al., 2007; Viswanath et al., 2009). The dis-
advantage of this method is that only public information can be
retrieved, the code needs to be checked and updated constantly as
the structure of web files can change without prior notice, and that
platforms do not provide any documentation about their web files.
Another possibility is to use surveys (Acquisti and Gross, 2006;
Bozkir et al., 2010; Young, 2011) or to ask a group of people for the
permission to access their data (Burke et al., 2011; Golder et al.,
2007). Both methods result in a strong sampling bias and make
it difficult to acquire large samples. Furthermore, surveys suffer
from incorrect and missing data. According to Almquist (2012),
false positive and false negative error rates are around 5–20% when
Facebook ties are to be reported.
5.1. Data collection
The data used in this paper was retrieved by the Facebook appli-
cation myFnetwork (http://www.facebook.com/MyFnetwork)
from November 11, 2011 to January 3, 2012. When users started
this app, it asked them for the permission to access the necessary
data. If they agreed, the app called the Facebook API on behalf of
users. In return, they received a picture of their network graph.
The sna package (Butts, 2008) for R (R Core Team, 2012) was used
for parts of the app as well as for the analysis. Persons became
aware of the app when they saw this picture on their friends’ news
feeds. Similar data collection approaches were conducted by Nazir
et al. (2008) and Vajda et al. (2011). The app had 1.3 million users
during the data collection period. Our server and scripts were
dimensioned for much less traffic, as we did not expect this level
of demand. Due to this high utilization, resource limitations, API
limitations, and high data volumes, the data of only 1712 users
could be retrieved. The waiting queue was implemented in such
a way that the selection of those 1712 users was random: when
the queue was empty, it was filled with a maximum of five users
whose first interaction with the app (in this session) was no longer
than 25 min ago. Consequently, the selection of users depended
on the download time of previous data sets and the point in time
when users decided to use the app. This way, users were selected
randomly during the entire time of data collection. Thirteen of
those 1712 data sets were omitted because the user activated
the app more than once, such that the data was collected more
than once. Five additional data sets could not be used because
of inconsistent or missing data and one dataset was too large to
be processed. This makes a total of 1707 available datasets. Each
user’s dataset also contains his/her friends’ data. Therefore the
entire dataset consists of network information for about 438,851
persons. The data includes the following network data:
• The friendship network: binary symmetric ego networks includ-
ing the app users (egos), their friends, and the friendship relations
between them.
• The communication network: weighted asymmetric ego
networks including the following relations measured on the
same node sets as the friendship networks:
– Like relations: by clicking a “like” button, Facebook users can
value another person’s content (posts, photos, videos, and the
like).
– Comment relations: Facebook users can make comments on
another person’s content.
 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
– Post relations: Facebook users can post on the “wall” of another
person to leave non-private messages.
– Tag relations: Facebook users can tag friends in their posts.
Edge weights and directions correspond to the sum of likes, com-
ments, and posts a Facebook user contributed to another user’s
content or wall.
The measures of R and RC are available for 438,851 Facebook
users. B is available only for the 1707 app users because the commu-
nication network is defined on the same node set as the friendship
network and the friendship network is only known for app users.
5.2. Notice on privacy
App users had to explicitly agree that the app could access
the part of their data described above. They were informed that
their data will be used for scientific purposes only and that it
will not be given away to any third party. Users could easily
request the deletion of their data from our database. Facebook
users have the possibility to keep all apps from accessing their
data.
5.3. Data limitations
The retrieved data is subject to the following limitations:
• The retrieved number of posts is limited to the latest 25 for each
user or friend. 73% of the 438,851 Facebook users have less than
25 posts. That is, the data reflects their entire posting history.
(Users can delete their posts.) The remaining 27% of users have
a median posting frequency of 1.8 posts a day. Consequently,
25 posts represent nearly two weeks of their posting activity in
terms of median. There might be cases where this time frame
or these particular posts are not representative for the recent
posting behavior. However, there should not be any systematic
distortion of social capital measures arising from this choice of
limit. As Viswanath et al. (2009) pointed out, individual commu-
nication ties can change quickly in Facebook, while the overall
network structure is constant over time.
• The Facebook API respects the users’ privacy settings. That is:
– When friends disallow apps to access their data, the app could
not retrieve it. We estimate that this applied to around 2% of
friends.
– In the friend networks, edges are missing when friends hide
their friend list from the app user.
• Due to limitations on our part we had to reject users with more
than 1000 friends. Facebook users can have up to 5000 friends.
• The sampling procedure caused some selection bias:
– Due to the word-of-mouth spreading of the app, data from
some friends was retrieved more than once if friend networks
overlapped. The difference of the total number of sampled per-
sons to the number of unique ones is 10,294, which corresponds
to 2.3% of the sample. We kept those doublets because time
differences in the data collection and different privacy sett-
ings of users allow for different perspectives on some friend’s
networks.
– The average number of friends in our sample is 256, whereas
overall it is 130 according to Facebook. This is due to the fact
that Facebook users with many friends were more likely to
be aware of the app. Furthermore, app users posted more and
received more reactions on their posts than their friends. This
is a sign of self-selection bias in the sense that that passionately
active Facebook users tend to show more interest in using the
app.
– The geographical distribution of app users is probably different
from all Facebook users. We observed that the app first diffused
33
in Poland, then in the Netherlands, then in Japan, thereafter in
the UK and finally in the US. Overall the dataset is dominated
by European users.
– Throughout the entire time of data collection, there were
around twice as many male than female users.
6. Results
6.1. Hypothesis 1a: the access to social capital improves with the
number of friends
The number of friends is the only clear indicator of access to
social capital visible to Facebook users. However, is it a reliable
measure? The first row of plots in Fig. 1 shows the number of friends
on the x-axis and the three social capital measures on the y-axis.
Darker shades of hexagons represent higher densities in the cor-
responding cells. Kendall’s correlation coefficients (Cor) are stated
on top of each plot together with their p-values. The number of
data points is 1707 for betweenness B and the corresponding alpha-
level is 0.008 = 0.05/(6 × 1) (Bonferroni-correction). R and RC have
438,851 data points with an alpha level of 0.004 = 0.05/(6 × 2). The
same description applies to all hexagon binning plots in this section.
They were produced by using the hexbin package (Carr et al., 2013).
The first row of plots in Fig. 1 indicates that there is a slightly
positive relationship between social capital measures and the num-
ber of friends. However, with significant correlations between 0.1
and 0.21, the relationship is not as strong as one could expect. The
weak relationship with R is especially surprising as it sounds very
reasonable to assume that the larger the audience the more per-
sons are interested in the content. However, in our dataset, 51%
of communication ties on average are with the three best friends
(in terms of communication intensity) and 80% are with the 5%
best friends. On average, app users communicated with only 19%
of their friends. This confirms the prevailing opinion that the notion
of online friend was versatile. It seems that Facebook users main-
tain only a relatively small number of regular contacts considering
the low barrier nature of the communication features and the large
number of latent friends. Of course, the stated numbers neglect the
passively consumed information that entails “mental contact”.
The second row of plots in Fig. 1 reveals another insight by show-
ing average social capital measures over an interval of number of
friends. That is, each horizontal dash indicates the length and posi-
tion of the interval on the x-axis and the average social capital for
this interval on the y-axis. Up to a certain limit of 400–600 friends
(indicated by the grey vertical line), social capital increases linearly
with network size. Beyond this level, social capital measures are
mixed, even in terms of averages. Different choices of intervals yield
very similar results.
At the limit of 400–600 friends, we might interpret a separa-
tion of Facebook users into two groups: users of the first group
confirm observations by other researchers stating that exaggerated
friending behavior had negative impacts. Our analysis suggests that
exaggeration begins at a level of around 400–600 friends. However,
this reasoning does not hold for all users: social capital scores of the
second group might not be primarily supported by mutual commu-
nication ties, a sign of real friendship, but those users are probably
in some kind of outstanding social position or post exceptionally
interesting content.
Summing up, the high variability in the data suggests that the
number of friends is no clear indicator of access to social capital.
In terms of averages, there is a considerable positive association
between network size and access to social capital up to around
400–600 friends. That is, up to this level, an additional friend is
probably rather advantageous. Beyond, social capital is determined
by different factors.
34 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41

Cor=0.13 (p−value=0) Cor=0.1 (p−value=0) Cor=0.21 (p−value=0)

Number of reactions (in thousand)

1.2 80
0.4
1

Betweenness
60

Reciprocity
0.8 0.3

0.6 40
0.2
0.4
0.1 20
0.2

0 0
0

0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 800 1000
Number of friends Number of friends Number of friends

0.30

12
200
Average number of reactions

0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25

10
Average betweenness

Average reciprocity
150

6 8
100

4
50

2
0.05

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 800 1000
Number of friends Number of friends Number of friends

Fig. 1. Social capital vs. the number of friends.

6.2. Hypothesis 1b: the access to social capital improves with the the number of friends. Optimal social capital scores are most likely
number of communication partners at a level of 130 communication partners.

As a large number of latent friends does not necessarily con- 6.3. Hypothesis 2: there is a relationship between the posting
tribute to the access to social capital, we investigate the relationship frequency and the access to social capital
between the number of communication partners and social capital.
The first row of plots in Fig. 2 indicates that this association is Fig. 3 shows the average social capital based on the correspond-
indeed much stronger. Especially betweenness, a measure related ing intervals of number of posts per day. The plots are limited to a
to bridging social capital, clearly increases with the number of com- maximum of 30 posts per day, a frequency that is exceeded only by
munication partners (significant correlation of 0.37). very few users.
The second row of plots in Fig. 2 showing social capital meas- For R and RC, there is a clear increase in average social capital up
ures averaged over intervals of number of communication partners, to 0.09–0.11 posts a day (corresponds to 33–40 posts a year) and
underlines the lower variability compared to the corresponding 0.021–0.028 posts a day (corresponds to 8–10 posts a year), respec-
plot of number of friends (Fig. 1(b)). All three averaged social capital tively. Beyond these levels, the associations turn negative, such that
measures steeply increase up to around 130 communication part- someone posting 2.8–3 times a day, for example, receives just as
ners (indicated by vertical dashed lines). Beyond, the average R and many reactions R on average as someone who posts 0.014–0.021
the average RC become heterogeneous, while the average B steadily times a day (corresponds to 5–8 times a year). Although, the rela-
increases. Different choices of intervals give very similar results. tionship is not bell-shaped in the strict sense, an increase, peak, and
This indicates that a large number of communication partners is decline are obvious. Consequently, in order to maximize access to
a good way to improve access to bridging social capital. Instead, bonding social capital on the basis of posting frequency, around one
access to bonding social capital can deteriorate when the number of post every ten days is optimal. When clearly more posts are sent,
communication partners exceeds 130. Likewise, the average RC can friends apparently begin to disesteem the users’ efforts and reduce
decrease beyond a level of 130 communication partners, although their reactions.
an RC of four (the minimum beyond 130 communication partners) The average RC, that is the ratio of incoming and outgoing arcs
is still very advantageous. averaged over all friends, is larger than one for posting frequencies
This level of 130 is astonishingly close the Dunbar’s number of smaller than 3.2 posts a day. Beyond this level, users send more
150 (Dunbar, 1992). This hypothesis does not consider the con- arcs than they receive, which can be interpreted as a disadvan-
tinuity of communication and Dunbar’s number does not aim to tageous and undesirable situation. Everything below 3.2 posts a
optimize social capital. Still, we might interpret the results in a day is gladly accepted and reflected positively by friends. The rela-
way that they confirm rather than disprove the idea that efforts tionship between the posting frequency and B is partly different:
to exceed a certain number of communication partners are not just as the other two measures, the average B strongly increases
necessarily fruitful. for posting frequencies up to around 0.07 a day (26 posts a year).
Summing up, the number of communication partners is a more After this, B continues to grow, but slowly, until the posting fre-
reliable indicator for the access to social capital on Facebook than quency reaches around seven posts a day. Beyond this level, B
 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41 35

Cor=0.27 (p−value=0) Cor=0.37 (p−value=0) Cor=0.34 (p−value=0)

Number of reactions (in thousand)

1.2
80
1 0.4

Betweenness
60

Reciprocity
0.8 0.3

0.6
40
0.2
0.4
0.1 20
0.2

0 0
0

0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Number of communication partners Number of communication partners Number of communication partners

0.25
200

8
0.20
150

Average RC
6
Average R

Average B
0.15
100

4
0.10
50

2
0.05

0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Number of communication partners Number of communication partners Number of communication partners

Fig. 2. Social capital vs. the number of communication partners.

is very unsteady. Consequently, access to bridging social capital 6.4. Hypothesis 3: the access to social capital improves with the
clearly grows with the posting frequency as long as it is not very share of intentional posts
high. Once seven posts a day are exceeded, no definite effect can be
shown. Although averaging yielded a clear picture in the previous sec-
As already observed in the two previous hypotheses, reactions tion, the variability in the data is high. This might suggest that
to exaggerated behavior are mixed or negatively. Exaggeration in the access to social capital does not only depend on the num-
terms of posting frequency begins at least at around seven posts a ber of posts but also on the content. An analysis of texts goes
day, according to our data. beyond the scope of this paper, however Facebook provides a
20 40 60
Average R

0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0.05 0.15 0.25
Average B

0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Average RC
0.5 1.5

0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Number of posts per day

Fig. 3. Average of social capital measures (y-axis) vs. the number of posts per day (detail).
36 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
useful categorization of types of post. We reclassified them into
two types of posts: intentional and automatic posts. Intentional
posts are typed and sent by the user. Automatic posts are notifi-
cations formulated by Facebook to inform friends about the users’
activities.
Correlations between the share of intentional posts and social
capital measures are 0.32 (R), 0.05 (B, non-significant), and 0.03
(RC), suggesting that R is to some extent influenced by the share
of intentional posts, while the other two measures are not. How-
ever, Fig. 4, showing averaged social capital scores, reveals a more
distinct picture. There is a surprisingly linear relationship between
the share of intentional posts and the average R. We might con-
clude that the share of intentional posts is one of the most decisive
factors for the access to bonding social capital. Users who do
not communicate as much with others, but rather use the site
for other, more passive, activities, produce a large share of auto-
matic posts and therefore do not get as many reactions. In our
dataset, each Facebook user created only 17% intentional posts
on average. We recommend keeping an eye on the generation
of automatic posts like those stated below, because they attract
only a small number of reactions, while increasing the posting fre-
quency (which can have a negative effect, as noted in the previous
section):
“[Friend A] and [Friend B] are now friends”,
“[Your friend] likes a page: http://. . .”,
“[Your friend] went from [former relationship status] to [new relationship status]. . .”,
“[Your friend] installed Facebook for iPhone”,
“[Your friend] answered [this person’s] question:. . .”
“[Your friend] started using this app:. . .”
Status posts with pictures or videos yield most reactions (23.6 on
average with a standard deviation of 41.4). Photos and videos that
were not uploaded together with a status message gather only 10.1
and 8.1 reactions, respectively, on average. Shared links (“[Your
friend] likes a link:. . .”) perform poorest with an average number
of reactions of 2.7.
In contrast, the type of posts does not seem to influence B: up to
a share of 40% of intentional posts B is almost constant and beyond
this level it is unsteady. Consequently, bridging social capital is not
affected by the type of posts.
6.5. Hypothesis 4: the access to social capital improves with the
number of outgoing addressed communication ties
Significant correlations of 0.15 (R), 0.35 (B), and 0.46 (RC) indi-
cate that there is a noticeable relationship between the number
of outgoing ties and the access to social capital (first row of plots
in Fig. 5). Especially the reciprocity-based social capital can be
improved by addressing single persons instead of all friends. The
rather weak effect on R, the measure for the access to bonding social
capital, might indicate that close friends may reply using other com-
munication media. In line with this argumentation, B is affected
much stronger, which suggests that loose contacts tend to reply via
Facebook.
In previous sections, we observed deteriorating or mixed social
capital measures once certain levels of predictors were exceeded.
As shown in the second row of plots in Fig. 5, a similar effect ema-
nating from the number of addressed communication ties is not as
obvious.
6.6. Hypothesis 5: a user’s access to social capital increases with
the access to social capital of his or her friends
R is available not only for app users, but also for their friends.
We calculated the average R over all friends of each user in order
to measure the social capital level of ego-networks.
Significant correlations of 0.11 (R), 0.14 (B), and 0.17 (RC)
between the average R of friends and users’ social capital measures
suggest that there is a slight tendency for friendship homophily
based on the access to social capital. Fig. 6, showing the averages of
social capital measures, indicates roughly bell-shaped relationships
with some “outliers” at very high levels of friends’ social capital.
That is, we observe once again a bisection of the dataset into a first
segment with positive relationships between predictors and social
capital measures and a second section with rather negative rela-
tionships or high levels of heterogeneity. We conclude that users
having a not so good or medium access to social capital tend to clus-
ter in terms of friendship, while persons with a very good access
to social capital have mixed friends, many of which range in lower
areas.
Results from Hypothesis 1b suggested that the size of the com-
munication network is a better indicator of the access to social
capital than the friendship network size. Accordingly, homophily
might be more present in the communication network than in the
friendship network. Fig. 7 shows the averages of users’ social capital
measures (y-axis) over corresponding intervals of their communi-
cation partners’ average R (left) and RC (right). (B is not available for
communication partners.) The plots show almost linearly increas-
ing relationships. That is, users with a not so good or medium access
to social capital are friends and communicate with persons yielding
similar scores. In contrast, users with a very good access to social
capital have mixed friends, but they prefer communicating with
other high-performing persons.
Summing up, homophily based on the access to social capital
exists in the communication network rather than in the friendship
network.
6.7. Regression models for the access to social capital
In order to find possible interactions between variables as well
as to measure the magnitude of main effects, we formulate neg-
ative binomial hurdle models for R and linear regression models
for B and RC, respectively. Hurdle models consist of two compo-
nents: a binomial model estimates the probability for observing
counts larger than zero and a truncated count model is used for
positive counts. This way, the model accounts for excessive zeros.
Hurdle models were fitted using the hurdle() function from the
pscl package (Zeileis et al., 2008) and the lm() function from the R
base distribution was employed for the linear models.
Possible predictors are the number of friends (NF, Hypothesis
1a), the number of communication partners (NCP, Hypothesis 1b),
the posting frequency (PF, Hypothesis 2), the share of intentional
posts (SIP, Hypothesis 3), the number of outgoing addressed com-
munication ties (OCT, Hypothesis 4), the average of friends’ social
capital in terms of R (FSC), and the average social capital of com-
munication partners in terms of R (SCP, Hypothesis 5).
As B and RC are highly skewed, they were transformed using the
Box–Cox method (Box and Cox, 1964). The parameter  optimizing
a normality shape was chosen according to a maximum likeli-
hood estimate. The bcPower() function from the car package (Fox
and Weisberg, 2010) and the boxcox() function from the MASS
(Venables and Ripley, 2002) package were used for these trans-
formations. As the Box–Cox transformation can only be applied to
positive values, the number of cases was reduced to 1573.
6.7.1. Main effect models
In order to rank predictors according to their importance, we
first present a hurdle model and two linear models, each including
only main effects.
The main effect negative binomial hurdle model of R using a bino-
mial distribution for the zero hurdle component is summarized in
Tables 1 and 2. The zero hurdle component models the probabil-
ity for R > 0. P-values in the last column of Table 1 indicate that
the number and social capital of communication partners and the
 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41 37

0.22

1.3
150

1.2
0.18

Average RC
Average R

Average B

1.1
100

0.14

1.0
50

0.9
0.10
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Share of intentional posts Share of intentional posts Share of intentional posts

Fig. 4. Average of social capital measures (y-axis) vs. the share of intentional posts.

Cor=0.27 (p−value=0) Cor=0.37 (p−value=0) Cor=0.34 (p−value=0)

Number of reactions (in thousand)

1.2
80
1 0.4
Betweenness

60

Reciprocity
0.8 0.3

0.6
40
0.2
0.4
0.1 20
0.2

0 0
0

0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
N. of addressed comm. ties N. of addressed comm. ties N. of addressed comm. ties
20
250

0.25
200

15
0.20

Average RC
Average R

Average B
150

10
0.15
100

5
0.10
50

0 100 300 500 0 100 300 500 0 100 300 500

N. of addressed comm. ties N. of addressed comm. ties N. of addressed comm. ties

Fig. 5. Social capital vs. the number of outgoing addressed communication ties.
25
0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
400
Average number of reactions

20
Average betweenness

Average reciprocity
300

15
200

10
100

5
0.05
0

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

R of friends R of friends R of friends

Fig. 6. Averages of social capital measures (y-axis) over the corresponding interval of the average R of friends.
38 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41

100 150 200 250

Average number of reactions

40
Average reciprocity
10 20 30
50

0
0

0 50 100 150 200 250 0 2 4 6 8 10

R of communication partners R of communication partners

Fig. 7. Average of social capital measures of users (y-axis) over corresponding intervals of average social capital measures of ego’s communication partners.

Table 1 Table 3
Main effect negative binomial hurdle model for R (zero hurdle component). Main effect linear model for the Box–Cox transformed B (R2 = 0.28).

Estimate Std. error z-Value Pr(> |z|) Estimate Std. error t-Value Pr(> |t|)

(Intercept) −0.6367 0.4421 −1.4403 0.1498 (Intercept) −1.4605 0.0168 −87.11 0.0000
NF −0.0005 0.0010 −0.4667 0.6407 NF −0.0003 0.0000 −9.94 0.0000
NCP 0.0431 0.0112 3.8422 0.0001 NCP 0.0039 0.0003 15.36 0.0000
PF −0.0088 0.0131 −0.6713 0.5020 PF −0.0004 0.0006 −0.77 0.4432
SIP 19.4546 2.3029 8.4480 0.0000 SIP −0.0295 0.0282 −1.05 0.2956
OCT −0.0035 0.0025 −1.4170 0.1565 OCT 0.0005 0.0001 5.45 0.0000
FSC −0.0187 0.0094 −1.9806 0.0476 FSC 0.0012 0.0004 3.20 0.0014
SCP 0.0389 0.0104 3.7386 0.0002 SCP −0.0000 0.0003 −0.17 0.8686

share of intentional posts are most relevant for predicting non-zero

counts. Positive coefficients of all three predictors tell that higher
scores yield higher probabilities for R > 0.
The count component models actual counts based on a negative
binomial distribution. The number of communication partners, the
posting frequency, the share of intentional posts, and the social
capital of communication partners significantly contribute to the
prediction of R. The coefficients for NCP, SIP, and SCP indicate a pos-
itive influence of those variables on R. In contrast, the coefficient
for PF (−0.01) is negative. The model also reflects the non-existing
influence of the number of friends (p-value of 0.52). These results
are in line with the findings of Section 6. In contrast, the number of
outgoing addressed communication ties as well as the social cap-
ital of friends does not seem to have a significant influence on R
compared to the other variables.
The main effect linear model for B is summarized in Table 3,
where the response B̃ ranges between −1.9 and −0.64 after the
Box–Cox transformation given by B̃ = B0.5 − 1/0.5. Both, the num-
ber of friends and the number of communication partners are
significant. While the parameter estimate for the number of com-
munication partners of 0.0039 has the expected sign, the coefficient
for the number of friends is negative (−0.0003). That is, the num-
ber of friends has a negative impact on bridging social capital. The
number of outgoing communication ties significantly contributes
to B with a coefficient of 0.0005. The social capital of friends is
marginally significant with a coefficient of 0.0012, while the social
capital of communication partners has no influence on bridging
social capital. The results underline the presumption that overly
investing in the number of friends does usually not return the
desired effect. In contrast, maintaining many communication con-
tacts and many addressed outgoing ties are promising way to build
bridging social capital.
The main effect linear model of RC is stated in Table 4. The response
˜ is a transformation of RC with RC
RC ˜ = log(RC) as the optimal 
was estimated to be 0. The number of addressed outgoing commu-
nication ties and the social capital of friends are significant with
parameter estimates of 0.0068 and 0.0109, respectively. The num-
ber of communication partners is marginally significant with a
coefficient of 0.0027, while the other predictors are non-significant.
That is, addressing single persons instead of all friends is the best
way to create mutual ties.
Summing up, none of the predictors is completely negligible
in main effects settings, but the three aspects of social capital can
be manipulated by different means. The number of communica-
tion partners positively influences all three social capital measures,
while the number of friends and the posting frequency have a neg-
ative impact when they are significant.

Table 2
Main effect negative binomial hurdle model for R (count component). Table 4
Main effect linear model for the Box–Cox transformed RC (R2 = 0.30).
Estimate Std. error z-Value Pr(> |z|)
Estimate Std. error t-Value Pr(> |t|)
(Intercept) 2.8135 0.0798 35.2739 0.0000
NF 0.0001 0.0001 0.6487 0.5165 (Intercept) −0.0662 0.0806 −0.82 0.4114
NCP 0.0114 0.0013 9.0727 0.0000 NF −0.0000 0.0002 −0.25 0.8015
PF −0.0141 0.0023 −6.1046 0.0000 NCP 0.0027 0.0012 2.19 0.0290
SIP 2.4850 0.1427 17.4094 0.0000 PF 0.0006 0.0027 0.22 0.8281
OCT −0.0005 0.0004 −1.2181 0.2232 SIP 0.1735 0.1366 1.27 0.2040
FSC −0.0015 0.0018 −0.8030 0.4220 OCT 0.0068 0.0004 15.75 0.0000
SCP 0.0125 0.0013 9.7610 0.0000 FSC 0.0109 0.0019 5.84 0.0000
Log(theta) 0.4165 0.0360 11.5601 0.0000 SCP −0.0022 0.0012 −1.82 0.0695
 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
6.7.2. Interaction models
Interactions between predictors can reveal multiplicative
effects. In a significant interaction term, the effect of one variable
depends on the other variables. The coefficient measures the extent
to which the effect of a predictor changes with one unit increase
in the other predictor. For example, if we had the regression
equation y = 1 +2x1 + 3x2 + 4x1 x2 , then the effect of x2 when
x1 increases by 1 unit is given by its derivative with
respect to x1 : y = 2 +4x2 . Thus, the effect of x2 increases
by 4 when x1 increases by 1 (and vice versa). This way,
mutually reinforcing or diminishing effects can be quanti-
fied.
Hurdle interaction models of R. In the main effects model,
we found that the number and social capital of communica-
tion partners, the posting frequency, and the share of intentional
posts had the most prominent effect on R. In interaction mod-
els including one two-way interaction and the main effects of
all other variables, interactions with the share of intentional
posts are always significant and positive. This means that, by
writing more intentional posts, users can benefit from multi-
plicative effects on R. In contrast, all interactions not including
SIP are not significant. Consequently, a large share of inten-
tional posts turns out to be the most effective way to increase
R.
Linear interaction model of B. The main effects model showed that
the number of friends, the number of communication partners, and
the number of addressed outgoing ties were the most important
predictors, with the number of friends having a negative coefficient.
In most interaction models composed of one two-way interac-
tion between at least one of these variables and the main effects
of all other variables, the interactions are significant with a neg-
ative coefficient. Where those coefficients are not negative, they
are non-significant. That is, no positive and significant coefficient
can be found for any two-way interaction composed of at least
one of NF, NCP, and OCT. All two-way interactions composed of
pairs of SIP, PF, FSC, and SCP are also not significant. The over-
all negative interactions of NF, NCP, and OCT indicates that users
scoring high in both variables in an interaction pair tend to have
a lower bridging social capital than users who perform well in
either of the two. This can be interpreted as an indicator that
not only overly eager friending behavior has a negative effect on
briding social capital. Additionally, large numbers of communi-
cation partners and outgoing addressed communication ties in
combination with a high score in another variable have negative
effects.
Linear interaction model of RC. According to the main effects
model, the number of outgoing addressed communication ties and
the social capital of friends have the strongest influence on RC. In
a model composed of the two-way interaction between these vari-
ables and the main effects of all other variables the interaction is
significant with a negative coefficient. That is, users who have a
large number of friends and communication partners tend to have
a lower reciprocation ratio than users who are strong on either
of the two variables. Likewise, in many other two-way interaction
models, the number of friends and the number of communication
partners significantly interact negatively with other variables. Like
in the interaction models for B, no positive two-way interaction
can be found. Consequently, the deteriorating effect of excessive
engagement can also be observed for RC.
The two-way interactions models show that the share of inten-
tional posts has a multiplicative effect on R in combination with
every other variable. This makes SIP the most important factor to
keep an eye on. In two-way interactions models for B and RC, most
significant interactions had a negative coefficient. This indicates
that bridging social capital and reciprocity is especially sensitive to
exaggerated behavior.
39
7. Summary and discussion
In this paper, we derived three measures of the access to social
capital from the communication behavior of more than 400,000
Facebook users. These measures were correlated with the number
of friends, the number of communication partners, the posting fre-
quency, the type of posts, the number of addressed outgoing ties,
and the social capital of friends and communication partners.
Not surprisingly, the great variety of cultures and age groups
present on Facebook is reflected by a very high variability prevailing
in the entire dataset. Averaging helped us to more clearly distin-
guish the most important trends. The corresponding plots disclosed
important correlates of access to social capital on Facebook.
We found that, up to about 400–600 friends, each additional
friend improves a user’s access to social capital. Beyond, the rela-
tionship is very heterogeneous. The number of communication
partners is a better indicator for the access to social capital than
the number of friends. Dunbar’s number of 150 could be roughly
confirmed for the case of Facebook. About one post every 10 days
maximizes the access to bonding social capital and reciprocity.
Posting more considerably reduces those measures. The access
to bridging social capital improves with the posting frequency
up to a level of seven posts a day. After this level, the relation-
ship is unsteady. The most stable relationship was found between
the average number of reactions on posts (R) and the share of
intentional posts. Likewise, the number of addressed outgoing com-
munication ties (such as likes and comments on friends’ posts and
tagged posts) have a positive influence on the access to social cap-
ital. Users having a not so good or mid access to social capital tend
to cluster in the friendship network, while persons with a very
good access to social capital can have similar friends as well as
friends with normal access to social capital. However, in the com-
munication network, users with high social capital scores tend to
be related to their own kind. A longitudinal analysis could shed
light on the underlying mechanisms leading to these observations
of homophily.
We found that most social capital measures increase only up to
a certain level of the predictor. Beyond this level, the associations
are very heterogeneous, which suggests that an exaggerated level of
activity is only partly accepted by friends. The number of addressed
communication ties and the number of communication partners
are exceptions from this rule.
Regression models revealed that the share of intentional posts
has the most important effect on R. In contrast to the probable
intentions of many users, the main effects of number of friends
negatively affects the access to bridging social capital. The access
to bridging social capital and reciprocity seem to react especially
sensitive to exaggerated behavior in interaction models.
This study could confirm earlier findings about the negative
impact of exaggerated friending and posting behavior. We showed
that the number of communication partners is a more reliable indi-
cator of access to social capital than the number of friends. A more
detailed view on the kind of posts revealed that addressed com-
munication and intentional posts have a positive effect, whereas
negative effects are due to frequent unaddressed and automatic
posts. Signs of social capital based homophiy could be found, but
the mere effect of knowing someone is less relevant for predicting
the access to social capital than communication related behavior.
We showed how the access to social capital can be measured in
SNSs such as Facebook. The intrinsic communication features ask
for adequate measures to capture the access to social capital on a
large scale. By incorporating a text analysis or by interviewing par-
ticipants, the contributions to social capital could be validated and
defined more precisely. Naturally, this analysis captures only a part
of communication. Besides offline interaction, there are a multitude
of other telecommunication and online channels that may people
40 A. Bohn et al. / Social Networks 37 (2014) 29–41
prefer over Facebook. In this sense, the concept of communication-
based social capital could be significantly widened. Still, for many
users, their appearance on Facebook is an important aspect of their
social lives. The analysis could also be extended by other indicators
of access to social capital on Facebook. A potentially good predic-
tor of social capital, the number of “subscribers”, was not available
at the time of data collection. Subscriptions are a kind of one-sided
friendship choices. Subscribers can receive some user’s public posts
on their news feeds without needing his or her approval. For exam-
ple, Mark Zuckerberg has 15 million subscribers. Another good
indicator not yet available could be the direction of friend requests.
Such a variable could help to separate overly expansive persons
from those being in great demand. Furthermore, the number of pro-
file visits could add valuables clues. Therefore, steady extensions of
such a project following the development of the API could lead to
even deeper insights into the correlates of social capital in SNSs. It
remains a challenge of data collection, because every app cannot
expect to have 44000 users a day, like myFnetwork had during the
last two weeks of data collection.
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