  Since the 1940's there has been an interest in the question why social
networks often give rise to two antagonistic factions. Recently a dynamical
model of how and why such a balance might occur was developed. This note
provides an introduction to the notion of social balance and a new (and
simplified) analysis of that model. This new analysis allows us to choose
general initial conditions, as opposed to the symmetric ones previously
considered. We show that for general initial conditions, four factions will
evolve instead of two. We characterize the four factions, and we give an idea
of their relative sizes.
