In the NYTimes today, Michelle Slatalla wrote an article entitled Building a Web of Influence. In it, Slatalla discusses the effects and benefits of social networking sites, particularly LinkedIn, which allows one to form contacts mostly for the sake of professional advancement. Among others, she discusses a couple things that are relevant to the more formal ideas of social networks we’ve discussed in class.

In LinkedIn, you have what are called “first-degree contacts,” or people whom you are directly familiar with. The primary means of social advancement in LinkedIn is via having your first-degree contacts introduce you to their first-degree contacts. This is essentially a form of Triadic Closure. This is one of the huge benefits of services such as LinkedIn. Slatalla comments:

Before I knew it I had created a business network that included 99 connections (first-degree contacts), more than 10,000 friends of friends and more than 700,000 third-degree contacts.   

Slatalla has the potential to become friends with 10,000 more people, simply via immediate Triadic Closure, and an order of magnitude more than that if taken further.

However, what LinkedIn truly provides, as Slatalla mentions throughout the article, is this idea of passive networking. In this model, it is not necessary that you reach out to other people to form friendships, but rather people can (and will, assuming your friendship seems worthwhile) come to you. Essentially this equates to a culture where people seek out other contacts, and this, in combination with Triadic Closure, is what makes it such a successful service.

One can imagine a network with many nodes but no links. If this is a network where everyone keeps to themselves, it is unlikely that any edges will form. However, if this were a network where even just one person seeks out many contacts, this creates the possibility for triadic closure, and thus rapid network growth.