The 6 Degrees of Separation? Facebook Changes The Theory
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Mon, Nov 28, 2011
I’ve noticed a lot of news stories popping up about this- have you heard that Facebook has changed the rules? The basic idea is that everyone in the world is linked to each other, whether it be via friends, family, co-workers, acquaintance, etc. Apparently, you are only ever 6 people away from knowing someone. However, new research is saying that number may have dropped dramatically- now it may only be nearly half as much… 3.74 degrees of separation! Check out our funny image by Nitrozac and Snaggy showing how Facebook as made the world's information more accessible!
So why the sudden drop in degrees of separation? The obvious answer is social media, and Facebook in particular. Last May, Facebook conducted a study on all of its active members in order to see if 6 degrees was the true amount of separation or if modern communications had lowered that number. Using the social networking data of 721 million members, he had access to 10% of the world’s population to survey. With a crack team of 5 members, Facebook set out to examine the data and to prove that social media had cut down on the degrees of separation between all people.
The 3.74 degrees of separation, in figures
The average distance between any two Facebook users was 3.74 degrees
Back in 2008, the separation was higher, at 4.28 degrees
The median number of friends on Facebook was 100 friends, or .000014% of Facebook’s users
Of these 100 people, 99.6% were connected by 5 degrees and 92% by 4 degrees
Social media has made the world smaller
Sometimes I like to say “what a small world”, but social media makes this phrase true. Facebook and twitter are making the world even smaller. Consider how many strangers you’ve followed on twitter, and how many foreign countries they come from. Just the other day, I posted on twitter about having visited a particular place and a complete stranger tweeted back to say they had bumped into me there. Just another example of the small world and how social media connects people.
Next time you’re sitting in a coffee shop, take a look at the stranger sitting next to you, and consider how many degrees of separation may be between you. My feeling is, there is a lot less distance than you think!
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