most irreplaceable social connections were the distant ones. Jobs were often discovered through personal contacts, but not because they were handed out by close friends. Instead, the jobs were rooted out by following up leads from distant contacts—old acquaintances from college, perhaps, or colleagues from a previous job. More recent data-driven research—for example, using millions of mobile-phone call records—backs up Granovetter’s claim that the vital ties are the weak ones.
