Embodiments of the invention provide a method and device for extracting a characteristic relation circle from a network, which relate to compute technologies. The method includes: obtaining user information; specifying characteristics of a characteristic relation circle to be extracted; determining a user set, in which user information of users in the user set matches with specified characteristics, and extracting the determined user set as the characteristic relation circle. The device includes an obtaining module and an extracting module. In the technical solution provided by embodiments of the invention, after extracting a characteristic relation circle from a socialized network, relation chain information of the socialized network may be effectively utilized, and the objectives of effective propagation and accurate searching of information may be achieved.