Microsoft Researchers Suggest Six Degrees Of Separation May Actually Be Accurate

from the ah,-technology dept

Mon, Aug 4th 2008 6:19pm — Mike Masnick

The concept of "Six Degrees of Separation" was originally based on an experiment by Stanley Milgram where he asked people to try to send a letter to someone totally unconnected to them by passing it from person to person among people they knew. The idea was that, on average, any two random people could be connected within six connections. However, more recently, Milgram's study had been somewhat discredited. Yet, a new study, coming from Microsoft researchers suggests that six degrees may be fairly accurate. The researchers looked at data on how people use Microsoft's MSN Instant Messaging software, and discovered that the average chain length to connect any two users on the software was 6.6, and that 78% of all random pairs could be connected in fewer than 7 hops. Of course, what isn't accounted for is whether or not this has changed in the 40 years since Milgram's experiment, during which technology may have made connectivity much easier. Also, thanks to things like instant messaging, people who I might have otherwise completely lost touch with are now "permanently" listed as my friends. That's a bit different than the world in 1967.

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Filed Under: im, research, six degrees of separation, stanley milgram
Companies: microsoft

20 Comments

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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 4 Aug 2008 @ 6:32pm

Tom
I bet that myspace's "Tom" is the Kevin Bacon of online connectivity.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2008 @ 7:06pm

Re: Tom
Tom is more present on MySpace friend's lists than the 7-Up product placements!

(Go watch "Moonraker" if you don't understand... youngins!)
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Jim Gaudet (profile), 4 Aug 2008 @ 8:27pm

Has anyone heard of The Secret?
I mean this stuff is weird. Yesterday I am talking to someone about the "Kevin Bacon" theory and today I am reading about it on TechDirt.Com...

I mean, you have to read the book or watch the movie to understand. But, it is weird.

~ Jim
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2008 @ 8:41pm

Re: Has anyone heard of The Secret?
There is no secret. Epic fail.
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Gregory Booth, 4 Aug 2008 @ 8:53pm

Re: Has anyone heard of The Secret?
The Secret is one of the biggest hoaxes of the last decade. Now that you've read it, you'll see it everywhere it happens and ignore it when it doesn't. It's like buying a new car and then noticing that a lot of other drivers are driving the same model and color you are. Those drivers were there before, you're just noticing them now.
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Mr Ford, 4 Aug 2008 @ 9:55pm

The Secret
The Secret is NOT a hoax. I listened to the audio book version. By the time it was over, my tummy was-a-grumbling. I thought to myself how good some fried chicken would be. I got my fat arse up and went to KFC. They have fried chicken. It totally works!
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Steve, 4 Aug 2008 @ 10:35pm

Yeah, it will be less than 6 degrees as technology advances. Eventually we will never have to talk to anyone.
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Anonymous, 4 Aug 2008 @ 10:52pm

Hmm...
Yes, but if you stop to think about it, there are a lot more people in the world today than there was in 1967... Meaning, potentially, there was less people to know and thus may have made the chain shorter and closer to 6. Is technology the balance for the population increase, or the catalyst to actually make the theory more correct? The fun part is that there is obviously some truth to the theory though, whether it is exactly 6 or not.
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Etch, 5 Aug 2008 @ 6:29am

The Secret
"The Secret" is a way of organizing your thoughts. No magic, no mystical stuff. Its very simple: When you think positive, your mind is clearer and it functions better. Period. You can believe all the hype and crap you want, but if you follow what they tell you in the Secret "write your goals down, visualize them, believe in yourself, don't let negativety tear you down, blah blah blah" your mind will simply function better, nothing will "magically" happen, but you WILL make better decisions and will live a whole lot more of a stress free life. Its not rocket science people for god's sake! its just the same old "self help" stuff repackaged!
And if that helps people, then why not?
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Xanthir, FCD, 5 Aug 2008 @ 6:43am

Re: The Secret
"The Secret" is a way of organizing your thoughts. No magic, no mystical stuff. Its very simple: When you think positive, your mind is clearer and it functions better. Period. You can believe all the hype and crap you want, but if you follow what they tell you in the Secret "write your goals down, visualize them, believe in yourself, don't let negativety tear you down, blah blah blah" your mind will simply function better, nothing will "magically" happen, but you WILL make better decisions and will live a whole lot more of a stress free life. Its not rocket science people for god's sake! its just the same old "self help" stuff repackaged!
And if that helps people, then why not?

Thinking positively is a good thing. The problem is that trying to claim "The Secret" is only about thinking positively is a bald-faced lie. It does make claims that you can exert magical powers through your thoughts, such as dissolving traffic jams merely by thinking that you won't be stuck in one (and conversely, *causing* a traffic jam by fearing that you'll be caught in one).

It's a vicious, evil philosophy that blames the victim for everything bad that happens to them, as they could have avoided it if they'd just thought positively enough. Cancer? Your fault! Rape? Your fault! Child abuse! Guess you should have thought more positively! At the same time, it tricks people into thinking that they can succeed without putting effort into things, that they can win the lottery and land promotions and get hot chicks just by thinking that they will. Again, it is certainly true that a defeatist attitude won't help many of these things (except the lottery - you can play it with a defeatist attitude and have the same chance of winning), and a positive attitude may, but if you read the book and listen to the actual words of the author on his blog and elsewhere, you see what he's really getting at.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2008 @ 8:07am

Re: Has anyone heard of The Secret?
that's because 6.6 people away from you was the author, and he stole your thunder.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2008 @ 8:25am

Re: Re: Has anyone heard of The Secret?
The real secret is that once we hit 4.0 degrees of separation (via technology), the Singularity (ala Vernor Vinge) will arrive.
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Jerry Lees, 5 Aug 2008 @ 9:33am

Tool to test the theory
Very interesting article. I wrote a tool, the 6 degrees browser, on my website (linked above) that searches through data from a Xbox360 site (www.360voice.com) that displays similar type results. The tool uses data of 360voice registered gamer tags "watching" other users and displays links to those users and their "watch lists". The xbox live! gamer tag must be registered at 360 voice but even in that cloud of people it appears to be pretty true. It's always interesting to see this kind of data!
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CeeVee (profile), 5 Aug 2008 @ 11:00am

Self-selecting sample
This is based on a self-selecting sample as it ONLY includes people with access to a computer.
How many degrees do you think there are between yourself and a subsistence level individual dying of starvation in Africa ?
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Julian Sanchez, 5 Aug 2008 @ 11:27am

Ding ding ding
CeeVee nails it. I'm willing to bit that the demographics of any instant messaging service's user base don't look a whole lot like the general population in a host of ways. Ditto social networking services like FB. But there's an even more obvious form of sample bias at work here: Most people sign up for IM services because they know that lots of their friends and acquaintances use IM. So of course IM users will be fairly tightly connected--that's how they got there. The real takeaway here should be that if even in this pool that's basically self-selected for high social connectivity, the average chain length is 6.6, we can infer that the average for the general population is likely to be significantly higher.
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Derek Kerton (profile), 5 Aug 2008 @ 12:39pm

How Big Is Your Buddy List?
you say:

"whether or not this has changed in the 40 years since Milgram's experiment, during which technology may have made connectivity much easier. Also, thanks to things like instant messaging, people who I might have otherwise completely lost touch with are now "permanently" listed as my friends. That's a bit different than the world in 1967."

but I would bet that you actually personally KNOW far, far more people than you have on your MSN contact list. The fact that people only enter in a small portion of the people you know into IM should make it harder to get connected to anyone in the world in 6 hops via MSFT IM.

So this would suggest that the MSFT researchers gave themselves a more daunting task using only *subsets* of people that each person knew, and STILL came out with
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sara, 3 May 2010 @ 5:06am

You can discover your degree of separation with everyone in the world at www.digrii.com
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Phillip, 26 Jul 2010 @ 5:20am

Thanks for sharing these thoughts !!
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