The conclusion is seriously questionable since Facebook "friends" are often barely acquainted if at all. Many people evidently have "friends" lists in the high multi-hundreds. To compare 1967 with today, it would be best to use the same methodology that Milgram used, or at least, or a very similar one. See < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment#The_experiment >. --Dan On 2013-07-18, at 9:49 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
According to the NYTimes,
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/four-degrees-of-separation/
"Using data on the links among 721 million Facebook users, a team of scientists discovered that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the _United States_ was *** 4.37, *** and that the number separating any two people *** in the _world_ was 4.74. *** As John Markoff and Somini Sengupta report in today’s New York Times, the findings highlight the growing power of the emerging science of social networks:
"The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb.
"The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than *** one-tenth *** of the world’s population. The findings were posted on Facebook’s site Monday night.…"