LinkedIn Ran Secret Experiments on 20 Million Users to Study Strength of Social Ties
LinkedIn ran undisclosed social experiments on more than 20 million users for five years, testing the importance of weak associations or acquaintances in the process of positively affecting an individual’s job mobility.
“The authors analyzed data from multiple large-scale randomized experiments on LinkedIn’s People You May Know algorithm, which recommends new connections to LinkedIn members, to test the extent to which weak ties increased job mobility in the world’s largest professional social network,” said the study abstract, published on Sept. 15 in the journal Science.
The algorithmic experiments, which ran between 2015 and 2019, were conducted by randomly changing suggested contacts “during which 2 billion new ties and 600,000 new jobs were created.” The study was co-authored by researchers at LinkedIn, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Harvard Business School….