Check out this article I found on www.hlntv.com written by Jonathan Anker. You will be shocked!
“Kevin Bacon has been surpassed. His greatest claim to fame (“Footloose” aside) done one better by Facebook.
The social network has released a pair of studies indicating they connect a huge slice of the world’s population through just 4.74 degrees of separation. That’s 1.26 fewer than Mr. Bacon.
In research conducted along with Italy’s University of Milan, Facebook discovered that any two of its 721 million active users are separated by fewer than five clicks, on average.
“Thus, when considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest, a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend,” explains Facebook in a post on its web site.
Of course these global connections only account for people who are on Facebook — not everyone on the entire planet. But those distinctions are quickly blending into each other as those 721 million users account for more than 10% of the world’s population.
Read more: Let’s ‘celebrate’ National Unfriend Day!
Read this article from www.hlntv.com. You will be shocked!
The degrees of separation shrink even more when just looking at users within a single country. For instance, any American Facebook friend of yours knows any other random American on Facebook through an average of just 4.37 “hops,” to use the research lingo.
That’s not only kind of mind-blowing, but also really reinforces why it’s never a great idea to talk trash about anyone on Facebook. You’re always only 4.37 degrees of separation from being busted.
A couple other interesting conclusions from what’s been labeled the largest social network study ever conducted:
- The average Facebook user has 190 friends, though the median friend count is 100
- Our social world is shrinking: In 2008, the average distance between two Facebook users was 5.28 hops; today, it’s just 4.74
- 84% of all user connections are between people in same country
- Most of your Facebook friends live close to you and are about the same age as you
- Facebook’s 721 million users have 69 billion friendships among them”
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