geek

Researchers at the Microsoft mother-ship in Redmond say they have some pretty hard-core data proving the theory that everyone on Earth is indeed just six degrees away from everyone else.

The research “Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network,” used Microsoft Instant Messenger to analyze 30 billion conversations back in 2006. When the numbers were crunched, the data showed that you and I are just six point six degrees away from Lindsay Lohan, Brad and Angelina, Amy Winehouse or Osama BinLaden. Assuming that Osama uses Microsoft Instant Messenger, of course. Seems to me he’d be more of an encrypted SSH tunnel on IRC kind of guy.

Researchers at Microsoft decided an IM client was the way to go to collect their data because of its wide use in both personal and business communication. Microsoft Internet Messenger was probably deployed because, well because, they own it! Some of the other data the researchers collected isn’t surprising and and could easily have been a job for Captain Obvious. Microsoft Researcher Eric Horvitz notes in his findings that, “We find that people tend to communicate more with each other when they have similar age, language, and location, and that cross-gender conversations are both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender.”

So outside of the fact that this gives us a new and factually concrete reason to utter the phrase, “Wow, six degrees of separation,” whenever we find out that the busboy at Denny’s knows our Cousin Edna in Elmira, are there any real-world applications for the data? The Washington Post reported that researchers believe the findings could be of use for “political organizations, charity efforts, natural disaster relief and missing-person searches.”

The six degrees of separation theory is based on the idea that everyone is just one step away from everyone they know, two steps out from people known by the people they know, add infinitum ad nauseam. So basically anyone on earth can be connected to anybody else on the globe through a series of acquaintances that will not exceed more than five intermediaries.

The research brief is available online with pretty color charts and funny looking equations that are guaranteed to make your head spin.