Six degrees of separation research

six degrees of seperation diagram

Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

It is part of the initial research that have set out by the tutor to convey the subject, cross-examine and evaluate. So that we can apply it to our design.

Several studies, such as Milgram's small world experiment, have been conducted to empirically measure this connectedness. The phrase "six degrees of separation" is often used as a synonym for the idea of the "small world" phenomenon

However, detractors argue that Milgram's experiment did not demonstrate such a link, and the "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth" Also, the existence of isolated groups of humans, for example the Korubo and other native Brazilian populations,would tend to invalidate the strictest interpretation of the hypothesis.

Computer networks

In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, attempted to recreate Milgram's experiment on the internet, using an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, with 48,000 senders and 19 targets in 157 countries. Watts found that the average number of intermediaries was around six.

A 2007 study by Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz examined a data set of instant messages composed of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. They found the average path length among Microsoft Messenger users to be 6.6^.

It has been suggested by some commentators that interlocking networks of computer mediated lateral communication could diffuse single messages to all interested users worldwide as per the 6 degrees of separation principle via Information Routing Groups, which are networks specifically designed to exploit this principle and lateral diffusion.

Facebook 

A Facebook platform application named "Six Degrees" was developed by Karl Bunyan, which calculates the degrees of separation between different people. It had over 5.8 million users, as seen from the group's page. The average separation for all users of the application is 5.73 degrees, whereas the maximum degree of separation is 12. The application has a "Search for Connections" window to input any name of a Facebook user, to which it then shows the chain of connections. In June 2009, Bunyan shut down the application, presumably due to issues with Facebook's caching policy; specifically, the policy prohibited the storing of friend lists for more than 24 hours, which would have made the application inaccurate. A new version of the application became available at Six Degrees after Karl Bunyan gave permission to a group of developers led by Todd Chaffee to re-develop the application based on Facebook's revised policy on caching data. The initial version of the application was built at a Facebook Developers Garage London hackathon with Mark Zuckerberg in attendance.

Along the same lines was the group "Six Degrees of Separation - The Experiment", which instructed new members to invite six people on their friend list, and is cited in a report about the theory. The group however, had no way to check if everyone is actually within six degrees of each other, and has since been deleted. However, a newer group with the same name revived the intent of the deleted group.