Facebook degrees of separation shows friends are closer than expected


A recent study from the Mountain View, California, based social media company finds that there isn't much separating us from our Facebook friends.

 Facebook software engineer Sergey Edunov and data scientists Carlos Diuk, Ismail Onur Filiz, Smriti Bhagat and Moira Burke "used statistical techniques described below to precisely estimate distance based on de-identified, aggregate data," according to the study, released Thursday.

>> Read more trending stories

In short, there were a lot of statistics involved in calculating degrees of separation.

NBC News reported that there are only 3.57 degrees of separation between the average pair of Facebook users around the world.

The study said that among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook, the degree of separation is 3.57.

Users can look at the study in detail at Facebook's research site and see their own degrees of separation.

The study also looked at the degrees of separation for founder Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Zuckerberg's average degrees of separation is 3.17 and Sandberg's is a low 2.92.

"In summary, we find that the world is more closely connected than you might think," the study said.

About the Author