“Several writers have expressed fears that high involvement in virtual community
will move people away from involvement in real-life communities, that are
sustained by face-to-face, telephone and postal contact. [...] Such fears are
misstated in several ways. For one thing, they treat community as a zero-sum
game, assuming that if people spend more time interacting online they will spend
less time interacting in “real life”. Second, such accounts demonstrate the
strength and importance of online ties, and not their weakness. As we have seen
in the previous section, strong, intimate ties can be maintained online as well
as face-to-face.” (p.181)
While strong ties can be maintained online, when does your network become too big to sustain those strong ties without losing your face-to-face strong ties. In the end, when you a problem, would you rather know that someone out there is thinking about you, trying to help you, or have someone near, a close friend for whom it's easier to support you.
When do you spend too much time online, spreading your time over a lot of people, maintaining the weak ties, and the occasional strong one, while, in a way, neglecting those ties that are closest to you.
Out of personal experience I know that once you start 'facebooking' it can easily become a sort of addiction. Trying to see what people are up to, checking everything out, hoping for new messages from your friends. While it is a great way to stay in contact with those you can't meet every so often, or even less than that, it's a timesink.
Additionally, with the rise of 'applications', little pieces of software users can use, coming from third parties, increases the interactivity within the online communities. There are many new ways to keep in contact with people you know, besided text messaging .. ranging from book and movie recommendations, to superpokes, horoscopes etc...
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