Cliques have always had a negative connotation, beginning with what we remember from our high school days. The “power elite” popular kids excluded us from the underage drinking parties on weekends, and even worse, caused us to be the brunt of many bad jokes as we attempted to be initiated into the in-crowd.

If you compare this type of group and the cliques or niche groups one can find in social networks, it’s a night and day difference. You might have thought this post was going to turn into a rant revealing striking similarities between being a popular kid in high school and a similar position on Twitter, but it’s not. Instead, I’d like to point out how cliques are a natural progression in social media in order to weed out the noise rather than those unwanted based on their looks. Continue reading →