With a total of 1.59 billion users on the site, it's mind blowing just how linked we are to one another — in most cases, you'll be connected with others, even CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, in far less steps than six.
In a blog post, Facebook said the average degrees of separation between everyone on Facebook through friend connections comes to 3.57, less than famed author Frigyes Karinthy proposed in his short story “Chains.”
“Degrees of separation” is a concept that refers to how many people it takes to connect you and another person. For example, my friend Taylor is one degree of separation away from me, she has a friend named Patrick who is the second degree, and Patrick is friends with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is three degrees of separation away from me.
According to the post, Zuckerberg has an average 3.17 degrees of separation from all Facebook users. To check how close you are to others, you'll need to visit the Facebook blog post that calculates this stat for you. For example, I'm 3.41 degrees of separation from Zuckerberg and 2.92 degrees from COO Sheryl Sandberg.
“The majority of the people on Facebook have averages between 2.9 and 4.2 degrees of separation,” the blog post noted.
Image: Facebook
Between these not-quite-exact calculations and the fact that Facebook is missing the vast majority of the world's population in its study, these numbers aren't representative of of every human connection. People without Internet or Facebook are not likely to have connections with people who do, so the actual average degrees of separation between everyone is probably a bit higher.
We just need to get the 6 billion other people on Earth to sign up for Facebook so we can see how its theory holds up to reality.
In honor of its 12th birthday, Facebook has calculated the degrees of separation between you and every other person on the website.
With a total of 1.59 billion users on the site, it's mind blowing just how linked we are to one another — in most cases, you'll be connected with others, even CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, in far less steps than six.
In a blog post, Facebook said the average degrees of separation between everyone on Facebook through friend connections comes to 3.57, less than famed author Frigyes Karinthy proposed in his short story “Chains.”
“Degrees of separation” is a concept that refers to how many people it takes to connect you and another person. For example, my friend Taylor is one degree of separation away from me, she has a friend named Patrick who is the second degree, and Patrick is friends with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is three degrees of separation away from me.
According to the post, Zuckerberg has an average 3.17 degrees of separation from all Facebook users. To check how close you are to others, you'll need to visit the Facebook blog post that calculates this stat for you. For example, I'm 3.41 degrees of separation from Zuckerberg and 2.92 degrees from COO Sheryl Sandberg.
“The majority of the people on Facebook have averages between 2.9 and 4.2 degrees of separation,” the blog post noted.
Image: Facebook
Between these not-quite-exact calculations and the fact that Facebook is missing the vast majority of the world's population in its study, these numbers aren't representative of of every human connection. People without Internet or Facebook are not likely to have connections with people who do, so the actual average degrees of separation between everyone is probably a bit higher.
We just need to get the 6 billion other people on Earth to sign up for Facebook so we can see how its theory holds up to reality.