(NNPA)—It’s a smaller world than you think, especially if you are a member of Facebook, according to researchers at the University of Milan.
According to their analysis of Facebook’s database, the average number of acquaintances separating us from someone we already know is 4.74, not the six degrees of separation dramatized by a film and play of the same name.
According to the New York Times, a month of analysis of Facebook data found the distance between two people on the Facebook network is even smaller than 4.74 introductions. “In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37 [steps].”
Calling the Facebook social graph a “small-world graph,” the study concluded, “…it is reassuring to see that our findings show that people are in fact only four worlds apart, and not five: when considering another person in the world, a friend of your friend knows a friend of their friend, on average.”
(Special to the NNPA from the Afro-American Newspaper)
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