Your Casual Acquaintances on Twitter Are Better Than Your Close Friends on Facebook | Wired Opinion | Wired.com | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

... In a world of status updates, tangential, seemingly minor ties become part of your social fabric. And they can bring in some extremely useful information.


In 1973, sociologist Mark Granovetter gave a name to this powerful process: “The Strength of Weak Ties.” Granovetter had spent time researching the ways in which people found new jobs. After surveying hundreds of job finders, he discovered there were three main strategies: responding to job advertisements; direct application and coldcalling; or harnessing personal contacts.


When Granovetter analyzed the data, two things leaped out. First, jobs that people heard about via personal contacts were best of all. These jobs were more likely to have high salaries than jobs found through formal means or direct application, and they were more likely to be fulfilling: more than 54 percent of the people who’d heard of their job through personal contacts were “very satisfied” with the new job, compared to 52.8 percent who’d used direct application and only 30 percent of those who’d used formal methods....