I reported my first Facebook ‘Group’ today. The ‘Six Degrees Of Separation – The Experiment’ is a perfect example of what Facebook shouldn’t be about.
You are invited to take part in the most ambitious facebook experiment ever…
Really ? What’s that ?
Using the Six Degrees of Separation theory, I want to see if it’s possible to contact every single person on facebook. The theory states that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people.
Ok, well this is slightly confusing. The 6 degrees of separation principle is about linking to everyone else in the world via 6 steps. That’s not really what you’re doing here.
1 Join this group.
2 Click on “Invite People to Join” from the menu on the right.
3 Select all your friends (for the experiment to work, you need to do this).
4 Click on “Send invitation”
Hold on. If someone invites all their friends, all of whom invite theirs and so on then :
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Everyone gets spammed. A lot.
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Eventually everyone on Facebook with any friends will have had an invite (except pockets of people in Alaska who only know eachother).
That doesn’t really need proving, it’s kind of obvious.
It’s that simple.
Err, maybe a bit too simple. How is the 6 degrees of separation tested ?
Actually, it’s not.
All that’s ‘proved’ is that everyone in the group is connected via an unlimited number of degrees. And that all 4,624,201 of its members are morons.
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