regarding the spatial dimension of ego/alter relations, the fact whether egos and alters live within the same neighbourhood and the consequences thereof are heavily debated. some authors argue that a network consisting mostly of people who live in the same urban area may result in lower socio-economic opportunities. another strand of research emphasizes the importance of strong ties on the loca...

in recent years, entrepreneurship in it industry has been viewed as a prime factor of economic development. since opportunity recognition is a critical step in entrepreneurship, identification of effectual factors in opportunity recognition is of great significance. the main objective of this study is to examine the effects of individual and social factors in opportunity recognition in it indus...

We provide direct evidence that people with strong family ties have a lower level of trust in strangers than people with weak family ties, and argue that this association is causal. We also investigate the mechanisms that underlie this effect, and provide evidence that these revolve around the level of outward exposure: factors that limit exposure limit subjects’ experience as well as motivatio...

This paper examines the celebrated ‘Strength of weak ties’ theory of Granovetter (1973). We examine two hypotheses implied by the theory: one, for any three players with two links present, the probability of a third link being present is increasing in the strength of the two ties, and two, the removal of a weak tie breaks more shortest paths than the removal of a strong tie. This paper tests th...

Detecting strong ties among users in social and information networks is a fundamental operation that can improve performance on a multitude of personalization and ranking tasks. There are a variety of ways a tie can be deemed “strong”, and in this work we use a data-driven (or supervised) approach by assuming that we are provided a sample set of edges labeled as strong ties in the network. Such...

The social networks literature suggests that ties must be maintained to retain value. In contrast, we show that reconnecting dormant ties—former ties, now out of touch—can be extremely useful. Our research prompted Executive MBA students to consult their dormant contacts about an important work project; outcomes compared favorably to those of their current ties. In addition, reconnecting previo...

Social networks are important for finding jobs, but which ties are most useful? Granovetter (1973) suggested that “weak ties” are more valuable than “strong ties,” since strong ties have redundant information, while weak ties have new information. Using six million Facebook users’ data we find evidence for the opposite. We proxy for job help by identifying people who eventually work with a pre-...