The conclusion: The average “degree of separation” between a single user and any other person on Facebook’s massive network is just 3.57.
Advertisement
Apart from send the Friends Day video, the company also reminds its users that it’s close to making the social networking site available to everyone in the world. A study in 2011 by researchers from Cornell University, the Università degli Studi di Milano and Facebook found that, across the 721m people who were using the site at the time, the average number of links needed to connect any two people was 3.74.
Since Facebook has tabs on 1.59 billion people, they chose to do some research of their own, and figure out how many degrees of separation we really have.
Mr Zuckerberg, along with fellow Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg were holding a Friends Day event at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters, hosting Facebook users with “extraordinary” stories of friendship.
The company said last week that 1.6 billion people around the world log in to the service every month, a number that dwarfs any other social media platform. Sometimes they just make people in our lives feel a bit more loved. The way he sees it, more internet equals more Facebook users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated Facebook’s 12 birthday as Friends anniversary.
One other cool thing Facebook announced along with the Friend’s Day videos was an updated degrees-of-separation metric.
The initiative gives Facebookers to opportunity create a Friends Day video by stitching together “special moments” with their friends via a short film which can be edited and shared. “Sometimes friendship moves the world”, the 31-year-old billionaire posted. Reaching 5 billion users by 2030 may sound overly ambitious to some, and it would mark a 3.5-billion increase in users, but Zuckerberg is confident that Facebook can get there. Sometimes friendship becomes a force that sets us on a different path in life.
Advertisement
Facebook is also releasing a series of new sticker packs today, including ones labeled “Friendship” and “Best Friends” featuring a hodgepodge of popular animated characters. Think of people you’d be glad to chat with at a party, but wouldn’t turn to for support in a crisis.
