Social Networking and Individual Outcomes: Individual Decisions and Market Context illuminates a mathematical perspective to determining how one develops his social network. Focusing predominantly on a social group’s impacts on an individual ignores other features of social interaction such as the deliberate attempt to formulate networks.  Ioannides’ mathematical calculations simplify social interactions into cost/benefit analyses.  The costs include time invested, potential social devaluation, and others.  Benefits include attainment of resources, an increase in one’s network, and others.  In short, Ioannides hardens abstract social interactions into the confines of transactional interactions.

The article, while somewhat cryptic, quantifies attempts to increase one’s social network.  Such formulas are useful in identifying which components (e.g. other individuals, the environment, itself, benefits from the specified situation, etc.) are most impactful on the individual user (and, subsequently, how impactful such factors are relative to their counterparts).  Although Ioannides recognizes that individuals may be agents of their behavior (and that such behavior varies between environments), much of his literature assumes that humans behave maximally; that is, humans will only engage in behaviors that absolutely maximize their benefits while diminishing any potential costs.  Such presumption presents potential difficulty in accurately evaluating subjective human behavior on social networking platforms.