The \u2019six degrees of separation\u2019 notion states that every person on the planet is only six contacts away from every other person on Earth.<\/p>\n
A new study from Microsoft’s Research Redmond Lab studied the six degrees of separation using instant messaging information gathered from Microsoft Messenger users.<\/p>\n
The information gathered from people who use Microsoft Messenger included 4.5 terabytes of compressed information from 1 billion conversations per day over a month period of time.<\/p>\n
The data was collected in June 2006 and contains information on 30 billion conversations between 240 million people.<\/p>\n
The researchers were surprised to learn that the average number of contacts to get from one random person to another was only 6.6.<\/p>\n
This number is very close to the \u2019six degrees of separation\u2019 idea.<\/p>\n
The Microsoft study was led by Eric Horvitz and Jure Leskovec. Horvitz stated that he was surprised that their results so closely matched the 1967 study.<\/p>\n
He wondered whether the number six is a basic constant for human social interactions: \u2018Do we have a natural harmonic for social communication?\u2019 he asks. \u2018This is my conjecture \u2014 more work needs to be done on that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n