Social Networks: Don't Forget Real-Time Communications
We tend to assume that social networks are represented by destination sites or through asynchronous interactions via e-mail. Instant Messsaging, VoIP and other interaction patterns can also help us understand social structures.
Six degrees of separation in instant messaging
According to Nature in ‘Six degrees of messaging,’ computer scientists at Microsoft Research Redmond lab have logged a full month of instant messengers using — logically — Microsoft Messenger. ‘The compressed dataset occupies 4.5 terabytes, composed from 1 billion conversations per day (150 gigabytes) over one month of logging,” according to the researchers. The dataset which was collected in June 2006 contains summaries of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. And they were very surprised to find that the average number of jumps to get from one random user to another was 6.6.” This is very close to the old ’six degrees of separation’ idea which states that everyone on Earth is six ’steps’ away from anyone else.
Six degrees of separation in instant messaging | Emerging Technology Trends | ZDNet.com
Six Degrees Of Messaging
In 2003 Duncan Watts, then at Columbia University and now at Yahoo! Research in New York, did a large email experiment that also confirmed the six degrees of separation idea2. His study involved 61,000 volunteers, compared to Leskovec and Horvitz’s 240-million sample. Watts is impressed that the trend that both he and Milgram saw has now been confirmed on such a large scale, and without having to set up a specific experiment: “They are using communication data, so the links do represent something real,” says Watts.
Horvitz and Leskovec saw a number of other trends in their data. Over long distances instant messenging between just two people, rather than groups, is more popular (the application allows up to 20 people to chat at once). People prefer to chat to the opposite sex, and tend to stick to talking with people in the same age group, especially when they are young.
It's great to see that Milgram's 6-degrees idea validated in messaging networks. There's an interesting article in the January issue of Discover magazine--"If Osama's Only 6 degrees away, Why can't we find him?"--that takes a closer look at the original experiment. The completion rate for the Milgram chain letters were shockingly low--about 5%. When Duncan Watts repeated the experiment using emails instead of letters, he noticed similar attrition rates. When taking that into account, he did arrive at an average path of about 6 hops. He also came to the same conclusion that Milgram had about what it takes to complete the connection: people in the chain have to be motivated to find the next recipient. In other words, it's more than just knowing someone who knows someone to have a working social network.
Posted by: Andy Green | March 19, 2008 at 10:39 AM