Zero degrees of separation

I don't know if you noticed yet, but there is a film about how Zuckerberg set up Facebook on release in the US and Europe this Friday. The tagline goes 'you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies' - nice

Isn't everyone just so much more 'connected' these days? I have so many more contacts now than i did when i was 21. In those days i had a small group of friends from where i was born and a continuously morphing group of fellow drunken students. I didnt have email and i probably knew all the phone numbers i needed off by heart.

Now contrast that with today, and how connections can be made, fostered and in many cases revived through Facebook, LinkedIn etc. There is no denying that we are becoming more connected, you add people to your circle indiscriminately (and also feel guilty for de-friending them!)

This trend got me thinking about the 6 degrees of separation concept. This idea was that everyone is connected to everyone through a chain of, at most, 5 people. Given that these social networks are growing at such a rate, what is the degree of separation today? And how long before there are zero degrees of separation between the world's population. hey, I have LinkedIn connections I have never spoken to, let alone met!

Also at that point does Facebook become meaningless? I mean, will we just abandon it as we just don't have the time or the energy to pander to an endless stream of self satisfying status updates?

My guess is that as facebook hits a billion users we will only be 3 degrees of separation from everyone on earth. we will have 700 friends on average and we won't meet in bars, coffee shops or discuss last nights ball game. and the world will be a much poorer place because of it.

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