Connectionrather

Connectionrather is a conceptual framework describing a preference for maintaining and leveraging established connections within a system, rather than prioritizing the rapid creation of new connections or isolated interactions. The term blends the word connection with rather, and it is used in theoretical discussions and exploratory design work rather than as a formal industry standard.

In networking, connectionrather aligns with ideas that favor persistent or stateful communication channels over stateless, on-demand patterns. By emphasizing continuous connections, it aims to reduce latency, improve reliability, and enable real-time engagement through technologies such as persistent streams or bidirectional channels, rather than repeated setup and teardown of connections for each interaction.

In social software and data modeling, connectionrather highlights strategies that deepen existing ties and encourage ongoing participation within a community. This can include features that support sustained conversations, richer context around interactions, and representations of strong, durable relationships within a graph or social graph, as opposed to prioritizing broad, shallow linking or mass friend-adds.

Possible benefits of the approach include improved user engagement, lower connection churn for persistent channels, and enhanced data locality in networked systems. Potential drawbacks include a tendency toward echo chambers or reduced exploration of new connections, as well as greater resource demands to maintain long-lived connections at scale.

See also: persistent connection, connection-oriented protocol, social capital, graph theory.