Granovetter writes, “the strength of a tie is a… combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie” (1361). Granovetter says that the factors that make up these ties are not interdependent, but are highly intracorrelated; these ties can be strong, weak, or absent. He says that ties are often weak when there is alienation, yet weak ties are important to both individuals and communities. I think that it is interesting to see how a network that is considered to be weak can also be considered a positive thing, almost in its negativity. I suppose it is how you define a weak ties, ie an acquaintance, that makes its weakness not a negative but rather simply a scale of how well people know each other. And if you think of it like that, then it does make sense that having acquaintances will help communities to become stronger in the end. The position of trust as almost a benchmark for when a weak tie becomes strong also makes sense, just in terms of how we think about relationships on a day to day basis.