Facebook had its 12th birthday yesterday, and they celebrated by challenging the idea that we’re all six degrees of separation from each other. Now that we’re all online, apparently it’s more like three-and-a-half.
They ran the numbers on all 1.6 billion people on Facebook, and found the average user is just 3.57 degrees of separation away from anyone else. And in the U.S., it’s only 3.46.
That’s the average, but if you go to Facebook’s Research Blog while you’re signed in, it’ll show YOUR average. For example,Mark Zuckerberg’s number is 3.17, and they say almost everyone is between 2.9 and 4.2.
They explained it like this: If you have 100 friends who ALSO have 100 friends, that means 10,000 people are just two degrees of separation away from you. And if all THEIR friends have 100 friends, then a million people are within THREE degrees of separation.
This doesn’t mean the old “six degrees of separation” number is necessarily wrong though. Because they only looked at Facebook users, and there are about six billion people in the world who AREN’T on Facebook.
And in case you’re wondering, Kevin Bacon DOES have a Facebook page. But they didn’t list any specific stats about him.
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