Weak Ties Matter
https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/26/weak-ties-matter/
This article talks about the importance of weak ties when looking for a job. A strong tie connotes a deep link that one has with another person. One forms strong ties with people they know well, like a family member, friend, or colleague. A weak tie is one that describes acquaintances, people you do not know as well as your friends. The article describes the results of Mark Granovetter, one of the first to work in social network theory. Granovetter attempted to discover whether the strength of your ties affects your performance when looking for a job. He found that having weak ties significantly increases your chances of finding a job. Additionally, the jobs that were found were high paying and satisfying. Strong ties are normally tight groups of people, so they may not give you access to much information. Weak ties, however, act as a bridge to many other people in a network. This in turn opens up opportunities that were not available to you just from your strong ties.
The article then talks about a hypothetical company in Silicon Valley. If most of the employees are white males, then they would have trouble recruiting a more diverse set of employees. This is because many of their strong and weak ties are with people who are like them, white and male. The article contrasts that company with a company that has many employees of different ethnicities and backgrounds. The diverse company will have access to many more people through their weak ties, so they will be able to select employees from a larger and more talented base of people.
I chose this article because we are discussing local bridges and the importance of weak ties in class. Local bridges are ties to people in a network that have no common friends. The presence of local bridges in a network opens the door to new information, as a node is connected to more people that would not be connected without the bridge. These weak ties enable people to find more and better jobs through weak ties than if they only had access to the information from their strong ties.