🕸️Weak ties

A strong tie is someone you see often and know well. A weak tie is an acquaintance. Mark Granovetter's argument in 🔬 The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) is that weak ties do a job strong ones cannot: they act as bridges.

The reasoning is about overlap. My close friends mostly know each other and hear what I hear. An acquaintance moves in a different circle, so what they tell me is likely to be new. In his study of people who had recently changed jobs, most who heard of the job through a contact heard it from someone they saw only occasionally or rarely.

Example from work: the people who know my work best are four engineers and a designer. The people who decide about a group role have mostly heard of it second hand. The news about me was not travelling, because all my ties at Halden are strong ones in one corner of the building.

Often confused with: networking as a virtue, or the idea that acquaintances matter more than friends. Weak ties carry news. They do not carry trust, or soup.

Notes: 📖 Granovetter on weak ties. A seed of a claim: 💎 Weak ties carry the news that close friends cannot.