Six Degrees of Separation (The Small-World Experiment)
Stanley Milgram · 1967
"Any two strangers are connected by a surprisingly short chain of acquaintances, because social networks are far more efficiently wired than their size would suggest."
Milgram's 1967 mail experiment asked strangers in Nebraska to route a folder to one specific Boston stockbroker using only people they knew personally. It usually took just a handful of hops.
Milgram's participants forwarded a folder person-to-person, each passing it to whoever seemed 'closer' to the target, with no map of the network. Chains that completed averaged about 4.4 intermediaries — later popularized as 'six degrees,' though Milgram never used that phrase. Social networks aren't the sprawling, clustered webs they look like from inside — a few long-range ties collapse the distance between any two people.
What made Milgram's small-world result surprising, given that participants had no map of the overall social network?
Read more about the topic
The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- Small-world experimentWikipedia
- Could it be a Big World After All? The 'Six Degrees of Separation' MythSociety (2002)
Metcalfe's Law
"A network's value grows roughly with the square of its users, which is why the first users of a network are the hardest to get and the last are nearly free."