The origin of social networks is found in the already popular “theory of the six degrees of separation”, according to which any two people on the planet are separated by a maximum of six “intermediaries” . The first to formulate the idea was the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in his short story Chains . Later, in the 1960s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram devised a “Small World” experiment to corroborate this by “losing” a series of letters to his name. And it worked: the letters were returned to him in an average of 5.5 steps only.
Now Facebook and Yahoo! They have returned to the fray and have teamed up to try to demonstrate the theory through an experiment on the Internet, taking advantage of the 750 million members that the popular social network has. The new version of the “Small World” experiment is available on the website smallworld.sandbox.yahoo.com for any Facebook user, who only has to choose one of their friends, specifically the one they consider to be the most likely to meet the “target person” assigned to you. This will send a message from friend to friend, until it reaches the “target person”. On average, each Facebook member has 130 contacts on the social network.
The study is led by Yahoo! scientist Duncan Watts, who will publish his findings in a scientific journal. “The moment to investigate it is now, since 50 years ago there was no way to do it. Not even 15 years ago,” says Watts.
