Contact network

A contact network is a minimal social network in which people are not assumed to have any relationship other than to be able to contact each other - perhaps only to refer items of mutual interest in politics or business, that imply no longstanding collaboration or relationship or trust with each other.

Study of contact networks is central to advertising and marketing and political marketing and public relations in particular, since spreads of rumour and hearsay are thought to follow contact networks closely. A phone tree or buddy list for instance, especially when combined with technologies such as SMS and flash mobs, are well known ways to spread requests, rumours or news.

Unlike social networks, once the rumour is passed on, the ability to rein it in or restrict or qualify it may be very limited. Members of a contact network do not in general follow up claims or issues with each other as members of social networks do (or are thought to do).

Contact networks are also thought central to power network analysis because people ally, for purposes of achieving power (sociology), even with those with whom they have no social contact, do not like, and would otherwise not work with at all. A contact is thus something less even than a "weak friend" or acquaintance.

More than 200 such weak friends can exist in a true social network, but contact networks can be much larger - and are subject to such odd concepts as "customer relationship management."

Technologically, contact networks have tended to expand with the ease of sending and receiving people's contact information. Some semantic link conventions such as hCard have developed to facilitate just such a spread. Most Personal Information Manager tools also handle contact networks easily, even if they have poor facilities for handling relationships "as social network services tend to specialize in."

Receiving or facilitating spam is thought to be often a consequence of having many contacts, as a penetrated email account can often be used to spread much of it, without the contact necessarily complaining to the sender, as they would in a true social network.