I Love The Web

does ‘6 degrees of separation’ apply on Twitter ?

Sep 3, 2008 Social Netoworking

So I was bored and started poking around profiles on Twitter.  Soon I came to the question : does the 6 degrees of separation theory apply to Twitter ?

For the slightest remote chance that you have no idea what  Twitter is, I think of it as yet another social networking (or is it social NOTworking application) that allows you to track what others are doing. It can be used as a way of letting your readers know that you posted a new title on your blog.

Your readers then receive that instant message;  in a manner that is not too different from a ‘text’ or ‘SMS’ you receive on your phone except of course you receive it on your computer.  I should mention that you can receive those messages on your cellphone but I will tackle that separately as a topic.

As I was hopping from one profile to another, building a network of sorts for people i find interesting, i began to wonder how long would it take for me to stumble upon a profile of someone I would recognise or someone that I have actually met in person ?

It did not take long, I did infact find the profile of someone I knew. More about that in a moment. Soon I wanted to find out if  a ’six degrees experiment’ has been done on the Twitter network before.  sure enough I came across Eric Gehler’s post talking about the exact same thing. Eric , I wish you luck and I will follow you.

Anyway here is how my little experiment went.

• I followed Sisiwami
• Sisiwami follows Mongezi
• Mongezi follows Themba
• Themba follows Noto whom I have known for years!
  

Now, i have no idea how the 6 degrees theory works but I think Twitter has just improved on it. Is there a moore’s law twist to the theory ?

Tags: Twitter