Forget six degrees of separation. According to Facebook’s own research and data my “degree of separation” from others in the social networking site is just 3.09. Which means I am actually better connected than FB pres Mark Zuckerberg (3.17) although not as well connected as FB COO Sheryl Sandberg (2.97). Intriguingly, I have no direct mutual contacts with Zuck, but 3 mutual friends of Sheryl’s. The mean separation on Facebook is 3.57.
My friend Ellie, who is very well connected both online and offline will confirm that many moons ago we thought we’d invented the idea of six degrees because of the mutual friends we had and the odd coincidental connections we saw among each of our friends and family. Of course, it was Marconi in working on communications technology who apparently first suggested that one day we would all be connected to each other via mutual acquaintances to this degree. Oh, one more thing, you can play the Kevin Bacon game with almost any other A-list actor…