Six degrees of separation

03/07/2007 by Lee.

There is a theory that any one of us is only 6 people away from knowing anyone on the planet. The thinking goes that if I have a friend (which I do) that friend will know more people. Each of them will know more people and so on and so forth. So theoretically I have a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend that is the Queen. Testing this theory has always been problematic, but now we have social networking sites on the internet.

With the growing popularity of Facebook, I began to wonder if the theory could be proven, albeit in a limited way. I was looking through Facebook yesterday for people who are relatively famous and who are likely to be connected to other people of note. The great difficulty (as the BBC commented on) is knowing which members simply happen to share a name with a famous person, which use a PA to update and manage their profiles and which are the genuine article. Thanks to the BBC I now know that Stephen Fry is a genuine Facebook user, and has set up a group to manage friend requests by proxy as he was being inundated with requests for friendship. Whislt this is indeed a novel approach it does not help me on my quest. I had no choice, I had to send Mr Fry a message directly.

I’ve explained what it is I’m trying to do and sought his help. The question remains as to whether he is able or indeed even willing to help as no doubt he is a busy man. Every journey starts with a single step, and by attempting to contact Mr Fry I have taken that step. Should I not receive a response, then I’ll try someone else. I’ll keep you all updated with how far (if anywhere) I get.

This time next year I might even be your friend.

Posted in Random stuff | 1 Comment »