The strongest contacts should be those that have overlapping resume entries, i.e colleagues, former colleagues and people you may have studied with. Other contacts should have an optional tag (friend&#x2F;family&#x2F;random recruiter&#x2F;...) and would have a lot less weight. Being connected with someone because you worked 5 years with someone they worked 10 years with earlier is a lot closer than you having responded to the same recruiter once. LinkedIn has all this info and should really use it.<p>It does however show the conflict again: recruiters are their bread and butter, so they may want to be careful outing them as people with huge weak networks that appear to be spam nets.