Facebook and the University of Milan have determined that the social-networking giant has reduced the degrees of separation between any two people in the world from six to about less than five — and even fewer when people live in the same nation. The research continues psychologist Stanley Milgram’s “small world experiment” from the 1960s that explored the structure of social networks.
Facebook and university researchers first measured how many Facebook friends people have. The distribution is much different than in past large-scale social network studies. The researchers also discovered that the degrees of separation between any two Facebook users is smaller than the traditional six degrees theory. In fact, it has been shrinking over the past three years as Facebook has grown.
The overarching conclusion: The entire world is only a few degrees away but a Facebook user’s friends are most likely to be similar in age and from the same country. But does anybody really care?
Does It Matter?
“Social networks are tying people together or exposing the fact that people are more closely connected than perhaps we all thought. It’s a bit of a surprise how closely connected, actually,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “Now if Facebook could only help solve political and social problems like budget crises, climate change or global poverty.”
Sterling makes a relevant point. Although the Facebook-University of Milan study is the largest social network study ever released — researchers examined all 721 million active Facebook users, which is more than 10 percent of the entire world population — the results are interesting but not altogether significant in the immediate term.
But could it be possible that these interconnections could have an impact in the future? Perhaps. According to Facebook, for even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra…
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