I’m sure many people are on top of this, but isn’t there a big difference between different kinds of links in the social network based on their quality?

I’m thinking about this because I’m gearing up on Google+, which features the idea of circles, discrete collections of contacts with different characteristics: friends, colleagues, running buddies, frenemies.  And a lot of the discussion in the service about circles revolves around what to do with low-quality links.

In finance, margin is a measure of the quality of a business’s income.  If it costs a lot of money to earn your revenue, it’s not as high-quality as higher-margin revenue.  High margins inhere to businesses that create differentiation.  Low margins are the h**l into which weak, aging, or commoditized businesses descend.

So with links.  We all have 80-20 rules with our link forests, where some few are priceless to us and most are almost worthless.  Should be a weighting in measuring social network influence or the like.  Probably someone is doing it already.

Thoughts?  Want an invite to Google+?