The invisible handshake: How friends of friends become friends on social media

Wolfson GBF, Mohsen Mosleh recently co-authored a paper showing that having shared connections directly contributes to social media users connecting with one another online.

Think about your social network. How many of your friendships started out as a “friend of a friend”? How often have your professional connections come through a common contact?

This familiar pattern points to a core principle of social networking. For decades, social scientists have observed that if two individuals share a mutual connection, they are significantly more likely to form a direct tie themselves; a phenomenon called “triadic closure”. However, a key question remains: Does the mutual tie cause this connection, or do other factors – such as shared interests or simply more chances to meet – account for its prevalence?

In a new paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mohsen Mosleh and his co-authors from MIT Sloan School of Management and Cornell University, offer the first clear experimental evidence that the simple existence of a shared social connection plays a direct role in forming social ties, offering new insights into the forces behind human connection.

Visit the OII site for more information on this fascinating study.