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Yahoo, Facebook Test "Six Degrees of Separation"

Posted by samzenpus on from the small-world dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo has partnered with Facebook to test the iconic social experiment known as 'six degrees of separation' (everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth). The goal of the Small World Experiment is to determine the social path length between two strangers by tapping into the world's largest social network and its 750 million users, each of whom have an average of 130 friends." Looks like a fun project, but not quite as useful as knowing how close you are to Kevin Bacon.

3 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds Great! by jimmerz28 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh whoops while we were performing this test we accidentally shared a whole bunch of private information with our partners.

  2. Paul Erdos by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The editor should be banished from /. for mentioning the Bacon number and not the Erdos number.

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  3. Re:its a scam by wiedzmin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know it sounds like trolling, but you may have a valid point - Facebook knows exactly who is connected and how - they should be easily able to pull a report and see if 6 degrees of separation is true (sure there may be privacy concerns, but they can just add that as an opt-out feature again, not a big deal). This seems like an elaborate/obscure marketing campaign in wake of Google+ :)

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