subject: Fayetteville Social Media Network [print this page] 6 Degrees of Separation? Now Its Only 3, Thanks to Facebook!
The old saying that everyone in the world is only 6 people away from knowing everyone else is a well known saying.
The argument is, everyone is linked to each other whether it be via friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, one way or another, you are 6 people away from knowing someone. But new research has said that it may now be nearly half that at only 3.74 degrees (how you get .74 of a human being Im not quite sure).
But why the sudden increase in social awareness and contacts world wide?
You guessed it, social media! Primarily Facebook.
In May of this year, Facebook conducted a study on active members in an effort to see if the rumour of separation was true at 6 or if modern life had indeed made it easier to communicate with people world wide. The experiment, carried out by Facebooks data curator, Lars Backstrom on all active Facebook members (ie, had logged in once in 28 days). Using social network data of 721 million members, he had roughly 10% of the world wide population to test the theory upon. He along with four others, were able to examine and crunch the data and conclude that social media had in fact, nearly slashed the 6 degree rule in half.
The Statistics
Although Facebook caps the amount of friends you can have to 5,000, they found that the median was only 100 friends or 0.000014% of Facebooks users.
99.6% of these 100 people were connected by 5 degrees and 92% were connected by 4 degrees.
The average distance between any two users was 3.74 degrees
In 2008 it was believed the separation was at a higher 4.28 degrees so a decrease in septation of 0.54 degrees.
There Is No Such Thing As Strangers, Just Friends You Havent Met Yet
If you didnt the world was a small enough place already, Facebook and social media are making it even smaller. Its so easy to sit on your bed, login to the internet and surf social networking sites, following anyone you like on Twitter, accept friend requests and starting conversations.
Obviously, there are people who will add and follow anyone, whether they know them or not so these new findings are not fool proof. Its the same as if you bump into someone in the street, yes you have connected but no you wouldnt know them to be a link in their chain. Social media makes it easier to connect but not necessarily know, love or care about the people you connect with so this idea should be taken with a pinch of salt.
However, its beyond dispute that social networks can make it easier to make friends so maybe there is a chance you may well be connected to the person sat opposite you in the coffee shop
Real Guide to Getting Links and Traffic from Trending Topics
Taking advantage of trending topics is a tremendous opportunity to net more links and more traffic for your site while using a relatively small amount of resources. The beauty of promoting trending content is that you can ride the wave to additional free links beyond your initial promotional push. Who can argue with letting the masses do some of the work for you?
So, whats involved?
Watching Your Space
Below this post, Ive listed lots of trending tools I use to keep on top of things fresh from my own bookmarks. Do your homework, watch the ebb and flow of news, and look for a story or issue thats suddenly spiking and is generally topically relevant to your space. If youre in the business-to-business (b2b) space, youll have to be a little forgiving here and think more in terms of topic instead of specific industry.
Choosing the Topic
Be a critical thinker when choosing your topic to build links with this trending method. You want to spot matter thats already trending or thats just starting to build a buzz. Keep your eyes peeled for subjects that people will be blogging about and have opinions on. Often times, theres some trial and error involved, but the principle is simple: what is generating talk? If youre a bean counter, you can create all kinds of metrics to gauge the trendability of potential topics. Monitor tweet numbers, look for spikes in Google trends, see if traditional media is picking up on it, or you can use a combination of many factors.
Writing the Copy That People Will Link To
For this method, use only high quality content seriously dont skimp here. Low quality content on even the most wildly viral topic will not get links. I have one guiding tip for people looking to create with super trending content: what would a comprehensive guide to your chosen issue look like? Some traditional copywriting models you can refer to is a timeline of the issue, background to how the issue started, and creating an issue profile outlining different perspectives on the topic at hand. These are just suggestions; the key is to create the best possible piece of content to fit the issue that people will link to.
