With its one billion user mark hit yesterday, Facebook is closer to its mission of making the world more connected. And it appears to be literally changing the long-held idea of six degrees of separation, which states that everyone is no more than six steps from any other person on Earth. Researchers have found that within the Facebook community, that key number shrinks to just over four steps. This is just one finding of many coming out of an enormous study of 721 million active users on Facebook led by a group at Cornell University in collaboration with Facebook’s Data Science team. With such an embarrassment of social connection riches, the researchers have uncovered fascinating patterns and quirks of human and social behavior.
photo credit – Facebook Data Science Team
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