The Six Degrees of Separation theory, which is often demonstrated by linking Kevin Bacon to other actors and actresses, held up in a recent study at Microsoft. KING 5 producer Susan Wyatt writes that employees there analyzed communication on the company's instant-messaging network for one month. After studying 30 billion conversations among 240 million people (phew!), they found the average path length among Messenger users is not 6, but 6.6. Researchers wrote: "So, we might say that, via the lens provided on the world by Messenger, we find that there are about 'seven degrees of separation' among people."
Microsoftees test the Kevin Bacon theory
The Six Degrees of Separation theory, which is often demonstrated by linking Kevin Bacon to other actors and actresses, held up in a recent study at Microsoft. KING 5 producer Susan Wyatt writes that employees there analyzed communication on the company's instant-messaging network for one month. After studying 30 billion conversations among 240 million people (phew!), they found the average path length among Messenger users is not 6, but 6.6. Researchers wrote: "So, we might say that, via the lens provided on the world by Messenger, we find that there are about 'seven degrees of separation' among people."
So microsoft researchers had access to he personal names and addresses of 30 billion e-mails sent by users of the Microsoft Messenger service - and could identify who talked to whom. Tell me - where in the "privacy policy" of the network was it disclosed that whom you e-mailed would be made available to researchers?? And who else is that information being made available to??