The Strength of Weak Ties Granovetter 1973

I like the comparison of this paper to the cell phone paper that validated it.  Granovetter's argument here is that, defining weak ties as those people you are firends with who aren't friends with all your freinds, weak ties connect cliques and are the primary pathways by which information travels in social networks.  The most important thing to keep in mind is that this is all theory, introspection with only very sparse data, nothing that one could reinterpret as 'support' of his hypothesis.  There are cases when intuition ought to be trusted, and when introspections make compelling cases.  My notes are more inflammatory:
 Is this a result?  Introspectionist sociology: paradox or oxymoron?
 It is interesting that in this work social triads become a unit of thought 

Ending quote:
"My contribution here is maintly, then, exploratory and programmatic, its primary purpose being to generate interest in the proposed program of theory and research"

Contrast this with claims for ALife research.