What is it to 'promote connections'? and is that 'enough' anyway?

Chris Jones has examined the kinds of connections or links that facilitate networked learning, Thomas Ryberg is saying that we should also pay attention to the 'flow' along those links. My comment is that those links need managing (Nardi et al) and that this is a real overhead that we need to learn to manage. Furthermore, if this is a kind of meta skill, should we be encouraging it in our students? And if we can demonstrate that an educational intervention did or did not 'promote connections' between students and their peers/learning resources/knowledge, does that sound like a quality measure...?