ACM TechNews

Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon

Washington Post (08/02/08) P. A1; Whoriskey, Peter

Studying the records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, Microsoft researchers have concluded that any two people, on average, could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances. The study examined a database that covered all of Microsoft Messenger's instant-messaging network in June 2006, which accounted for roughly half of the world's instant-messaging traffic at the time. "What we're seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity," says Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz, who conducted the study with colleague Jure Leskovec. The Microsoft research focused on the popular concept that has inspired the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game and the well-known play "Six Degrees of Separation" by John Guare. The first effort to research the theory that everyone is separated by no more than six connections was done in the late 1960s by Stanley Milgram and Jeffrey Travers, who found that the figure was 6.2. The Microsoft researchers say their study is the first time a planetary-scale social network has been available to validate theory. In the Microsoft study, two people were considered acquaintances if they sent one another a text message. The researchers looked at the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect 180 billion different pairs of users in the database. The researchers found that the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven steps or less.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/
AR2008080103718.html

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