Everyone is just 3.57 degrees away from everyone else in their user base: Facebook data

About 1.59 billion active Facebook users can presumably now call Zuckerberg just plain Mark or even Zuck. After all, he is a friend of a friend of a friend. Now that the fabled six degrees of separation have been narrowed down to 3.17 for Zuckerberg, according to Facebook’s own calculations, and everyone is on an average just 3.57 degrees away from everyone else in their user base, we are all practically besties now.

And after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s decision in favour of net neutrality, Zuck probably needs all the friends he can get anyway. Many do not believe the original theory as it has not been conclusively proven, but with an eponymous Hollywood movie cementing the idea of six degrees of separation in popular imagination way back in 1993, maths is a feeble dissenter.

Five years ago, with Facebook’s numbers at only three quarters of a billion, that figure was 3.74. It suggests that not only have more people meant more interconnections, it has also led to a smaller number of intervening links or shorter distances. By that coin, if the rest of the world’s population is considered — who may be linked by various social media or, not improbably, totally off it — we may all be a tantalising less-than-six-degrees away from even the famously technologically-challenged Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt by now.