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We show that the more people who share a common friend, the more connected that person tends to be, and we derive an expression quantifying this progression. In a regional Facebook network, a common friend to three randomly sampled individuals has on average more friends than 99.9% of the network. In a citation network, a source cited by any two of a random sample of papers has on average more citations than 99.99% of cited works. This power of common friends is most pronounced when few nodes hold disproportionate shares of ties, typical of networks involving superspreaders of disease, mega-influencers online, and highly connected nodes in neural networks. We discuss implications for network sampling, targeted interventions, social perception, and network dynamics.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.2603299123","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]],"date-time":"2026-08-26T16:33:41Z","timestamp":1787762021000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Why friends in common reveal network stars"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"123","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5636-4423","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alec","family":"McGail","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Independent Researcher","place":["Chicago"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4820-1365","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Scott","family":"Feld","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02dqehb95","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Department of Sociology, Purdue University","place":["West Lafayette"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"341","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_4_1_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1086\/229693"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1209\/epl\/i2004-10286-2"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pmedr.2022.101787"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1088\/1367-2630\/acf067"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_5_2","first-page":"942","article-title":"Can random friends seed more buzz and adoption? 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