Since everybody is talking about Facebook at the moment, I thought I would too, but not for the same reason as everybody else. I was on a friend's Facebook profile page today while eating my lunch. As I was scrolling past her Friend's list section, I noticed there was a lady on her list that I had 29 mutual friends with. Now, I don't know this lady from Jane, but apparently, we have 29 friends in common.
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That got me thinking about the six degrees of separation concept which basically states that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. Sites like LinkedIn are built on this premise.
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I once took part in a research project attempting to prove this concept. I was tasked to find someone I was connected to who lived in Germany. This was the days before social media, so i had to satrt the initial outreach through email. I never did make a connection, but I'm wondering if the results would be different now if I used Facebook to start the process off. Or even this blog post.
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If you're a stranger reading this, how did you come across this post? Who do we know in common?
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