Kevin Bacon is no longer relevant

"Facebook and University of Milan researchers studied 69 billion friendships among 721 million Facebook uses and have shown that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world is 4.74. If they use Facebook, that is. That's 1.26 people less than the first estimate of human connectedness made in the early 1960s by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who came up with the oft-quoted 6 degrees of separation figure."

http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/anatomy-of-facebook/10150388519243859

 

I'd bet half the people connected to each other on Facebook don't know each other at all.

 

Mark Zuckerberg was on SNL with Jesse Eisenberg, who was in The Social Network with Justin Timberlake, who was in Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz, who was in There's Something About Mary with Matt Dillon, who was in Wild Things with Kevin Bacon.

Crap. That's more than 4.74 degrees.

 

Zuckerberg was on SNL with Eisenberg who was in Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, who was in Indecent Proposal with Demi Moore, who was in A Few Good Men with .... Kevin Bacon.

 

Kevin Bacon has a profile on Facebook, created by Zuckerberg.

That's 1 degree.

 

Ding!

 

People say this all the time, but I don't know that I have anyone on Facebook that I don't know. Why would people be "friends" with someone they don't know. How would they even find them?

 

Um, if you are friends with someone and someone you don't know posts on their wall or comments on something they post, you could essentially add them as a friend. Lots of kids do this...especially boys that want to meet girls. It's fairly common...hence why teen girls have 2,000 "friends", most are just horny teen boys (or horny old pervs pretending to be horny teen boys)

 

I know each and everyone of my 400+ "friends" on FB. Now, to what extent varies, from SportsJournalists.com to HS/college friends to relatives.

 

This is what I was wondering about.

People "friend" people they don't know? That's common?

 

I know a good 85-90 percent of my friends on FB and can you tell you exactly how we met. A good chunk are extended family members, another sizable chunk are church folks, and then another group are folks from here. And then there are the friends I either went to school with or work with.

 

In a sense, SJ folks do it when they add someone from here. They know the person's SJ persona, but might not have talked to or met them in real life.