A theory that has always fascinated me has been the "6 degrees of separation." The theory says that you are just six people away from anyone else on Earth. How cool is it to think that you know someone who knows someone who knows Adrian Peterson? New research by Facebook shows that this number is now roughly 4.74, not 6. The average Facebook user is now only 4.74 degrees away from any other Facebooker. This study was done on over 721 million Facebook users.
Honestly, it blows my mind to think that you are only 5 people away from ANYONE in the world that is on Facebook. The interesting part is that the world's population keeps growing, but in just three short years the number of degrees of separation has dropped to under 5 people. Do we know more people now? I think a big part of it is social networking. Also, social networking makes it easier to get factual data on how everyone is connected.
What do you guys think? Are you as fascinated as I am about the degrees of separation?
I guess I never really understood the 6 degrees of separation, as they are described. However, thinking that I know someone who knows someone who knows Jessica Alba is kind of a crazy thought. I get where the theory comes from, but I would like to see the proof of its existence. Additionally, now that they lowered the number, I am more skeptical to believe in the validity of this approach. Who are the 4.74 people that I know that connect me to someone I have never met. I am constantly fascinated by events on Facebook (such as befriending myself from Detroit Lakes), but I do not fully accept the 4.74 (6) degrees of separation.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a fascinating statistic. I do not necessarily think that we are closer to more people due to social networking, but I do think that we are smarter about networking. What i mean by this is that now we are "friends" with a lot more individuals through FB etc and we know certain people know certain people. Take for example a celebrity, I will probably never meet that celebrity, but I know that if I needed something, I would go to my friend who is friends with him or her. This does not make me closer to that celebrity, just smarter about how to reach them.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I believe it. I agree with Simon's comment that we are now friends with people that we hardly know, just because they are friends with our friends. If that didn't make sense, basically we are fiends with people we don't really know and I think thats why this number dropped.
ReplyDeleteWe have officially blogged about the same thing twice! I thought it was an absolutely fascinating article and felt the need to blog about it. I was astonished by the fact that we are only 5 people away from each other throughout the globe. Social media is bringing us together more than we know. How soon will it be before that number drops to one? They say it has been increasing with each study so it will be interesting!
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