In 1967 Milgram and Traver's undertook their Small World Experiments. They measured how many steps it took for a package to make it's way from a randomly selected individual to a target elsewhere in the US. On average it took six steps for a chain to complete - a concept that was subsequently embodied in the idea of everyone on the planet being 'six degrees of seperation' away from each other.
However, the sample size was small and the high fail rate is often overlooked. Is everyone really linked by six steps?
In 2008 Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz studied Instant Messenger data to see if they could find the same effects, analysing 30 billion conversations from 240 million different people over the course of a month. They found that again the average shortest path length was around 6 (median 6, average 6.6), though sometimes they found longer paths, with the longest showing 29 steps (this research can be found here.)
Now it's the turn of Yahoo! Research. They are taking the best of both of these, setting the spirit of the Milgram experiment against digital infrastructure, but this time they are using Facebook. The new Yahoo! Small World experiment offers participants a target and then asks for them to choose one Facebook friend to help move the communication to that target. There is also the opportunity for users to nominate themselves as a target. Will the results show that Facebook has made the world a smaller or larger place?
Interested to see what they find!
Join in at: http://smallworld.sandbox.yahoo.com/
Related posts
Six degrees of seperation - Stanley Milgram, social networks and experiments on LinkedIn
However, the sample size was small and the high fail rate is often overlooked. Is everyone really linked by six steps?
In 2008 Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz studied Instant Messenger data to see if they could find the same effects, analysing 30 billion conversations from 240 million different people over the course of a month. They found that again the average shortest path length was around 6 (median 6, average 6.6), though sometimes they found longer paths, with the longest showing 29 steps (this research can be found here.)
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| Yahoo! Research small world experiment |
Interested to see what they find!
Join in at: http://smallworld.sandbox.yahoo.com/
Related posts
Six degrees of seperation - Stanley Milgram, social networks and experiments on LinkedIn
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