Effective networking when connections are invisible: comment on Reagans and Zuckerman

1. The problem of effective networking A common task in everyday life is ensuring that sufficient structural distance exists between two individuals. As Reagans and Zuckerman point out in this volume, brokers may want to hold a monopoly on mediation between their brokees. The extra surplus earned from providing knowledge on monopoly terms stimulates a broker to bring together parties who are not yet mediated by anyone else. The parties would be more inclined to reward the broker for his mediation if he were the uniquely fastest access point for that information. If there were competing bridges between otherwise disconnected circuits of information, then the linking nodes would not be as critically important. Monopoly brokerage requires a minimum of three handshakes. The task also appears in a different economic setting. An advertiser avoids double targeting by handing out free trial-packages to distributors who tap into diverse social circles. The fewer distributees the distributors have in common, the fewer people receive the same package twice, and the more people try out the shampoo. One faces the same task in yet another context. To avoid contracting an STD, one should not sleep with people who may have slept with people who carry one. The more distinct bedroom encounters one can trust to separate one’s lover from a potentially infected source, the better. If a battered woman wants to talk to an outsider about her abusive husband without him finding out, she must find someone who does not know him or any of his friends. Her listening ear should be no closer to her partner than the friend of a friend, preferably farther away. A bragger is better not to lie about his past to people who may know key figures in those lies. He would not want his audience to be easily able to debunk his story. Again, what is required is that the source personages and target listeners are sufficiently structurally distant from one another. In each case, success depends on the ability to guarantee that two bodies are separated by a sufficient number of handshakes. The task is challenging, however,