There is a conjecture in the field of mathematics called Six Degrees of Separation. The Chinese translations include the following: Six Degrees of Separation Theory, Six Degrees of Space Theory, and Small World Theory.
There will be no more than six people between you and any stranger. That is to say, you can get to know any stranger through at most six people. This is the six-dimensional space theory, also called the small world theory.
Social networks are actually not sophisticated. Its theoretical basis is "six degrees of separation." Social software is value-added software and services built on real social networks. There is a story that a few years ago a German newspaper accepted a challenge to help a Turkish kebab restaurant owner in Frankfurt find a connection between him and his favorite movie star Marlon Brando. As a result, after a few months, the newspaper's employees discovered that the two people had established a personal relationship through personal contacts with no more than six people. It turns out that the owner of the barbecue restaurant is an Iraqi immigrant. He has a friend who lives in California. It happens that this friend's colleague is the boyfriend of the sorority sister of the daughter of the producer of the movie "This Man Is Somewhat Perverted", and Marlon Brando Starred in this film.
In the 1960s, Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a chain letter experiment. He randomly sent a set of chain letters to 160 people living in Omaha, Nebraska. He put the name of a Boston stockbroker in the letter and asked each recipient to send the set of letters to the person they believed to be. Friend who is closer to the stockbroker. The friend will do the same after receiving the letter. Eventually, most letters reach the stockbroker after five or six steps. This is where the concept of six-dimensional space comes from.
This chain experiment embodies a seemingly universal objective law: members of socialized modern human society may be connected through the "six-dimensional space", and A and B have absolutely no connection. Doesn't exist. This is a more typical, profound and common natural phenomenon. So, how to use mathematical theory to reveal the "six degrees of separation phenomenon"? This is another major mathematical conjecture in the field of modern mathematics.
This is a bit like the adjacent color problem of the map, except that the adjacent color problem can be accurately proved through mathematical methods (that is, only 4 colors need to be used at most), and the 6-degree segmentation theory I personally I guess we can only form hypotheses through incomplete induction. The social model is still much more complicated and unpredictable than the two-dimensional map model!
The phenomenon of six degrees of separation does not mean that any connection between people must go through six levels before there is a connection, but it expresses such an important concept: any two-dimensional Between people who don't know each other, there can always be inevitable connections or relationships through certain ways of contact. Clearly, opportunities to achieve one's expectations will make a marked difference depending on how one is connected and how well one is able to connect.
It seems that the six degrees of separation theory is very interesting. Find some information to read and study, and it will be really effective to apply it.
No matter how profound the theory is, the intimate combination of "six degrees of separation" and the Internet has begun to show commercial value. In recent years, people have paid more and more attention to the research of social networks, and many network software have begun to support people to establish more mutual trust and closer social connections. These software are collectively referred to as "Social Software". For example, Blog is a kind of social software. Because of the personality and continuity required for Blog writing, Blogger Circle, a typical ecological form in which things flock together, becomes more and more like a real-life interpersonal circle. According to Mao Xianghui, who is dedicated to researching social software, what is more popular abroad is a tool for quick friendship or business contact, such as LinkedIN. It will be easier for people to find people who have the same gay interests as them around the world, it will be easier to discover business opportunities, it will be easier to achieve understanding and communication between different ethnic groups, and so on.
There are many definitions of social software, and they are all in the process of continuous development and evolution. Its core idea is actually an effect produced by aggregation. People, society, and businesses all have countless permutations and combinations. If there is no information means to bring them together, they will be easily lost.
WWW successfully brought together text and graphics, making the Internet truly applicable; instant messaging brought people together, giving rise to tools like ICQ. However, this is still virtual. Although virtuality is an advantage of the online world, there is a gap between it and the real name and credit required by the business society. Through the aggregation between acquaintances and the "six degrees of separation", a trustworthy network will be generated, and the business potential in this is indeed immeasurable.
Aggregation also has practical value as an object of social research. Scientists at Cornell University have developed an algorithm that can identify "sudden" increases in certain words in an article. These "sudden" increases in words can be used to quickly identify the latest trends and hot issues, so it can Filter important information more efficiently. Many search technologies in the past have relied on simple calculations of word/phrase frequency, but have ignored the rate at which word usage is increasing. If this method is applied to advertisers, potential demand trends can be quickly found.
Society, network, region, business, blog, you may be numb to these words. But once those who foresee opportunities find the business value of aggregating them, it's not just the online world that will be changed.
Although the Six Degrees is a sociological theory, in fact it is more like a mathematical theory. Many people say that the Six Degrees and the Four Colors problem have the same purpose. In my opinion, the six-degree theory well explains the connections and connections between different nodes under a network structure (our human society). However, it is incomplete and not enough to guide our practice.
(1) The strength of the relationship - the issue of weight
First of all, Six Degrees affirmed the universal connection between people, but did not conduct a quantitative analysis of this connection. We may know thousands of people in our lives. Some of them are extremely important to me, and some of them are of no importance to me. The reasons and methods for establishing our connections are also very different. Some are inherent connections such as parents and relatives, and some are due to geographical proximity. Developed, such as neighbor relationships, as well as classmates and colleagues relationships developed because of studying and living together. In the Six Degrees Theory, they are all attributed to connections, and there is no distinction between strengths and weaknesses. In the network structure, the relationship between people needs to be weighted. Here, the six degrees are incomplete.
(2) The difference between reaching and establishing connections - the issue of purpose and result
In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale University, A chain letter experiment was designed. He randomly sent a set of chain letters to 160 people living in Omaha, Nebraska. He put the name of a Boston stockbroker in the letter and asked each recipient to send the set of letters to the person they believed to be. Friend who is closer to the stockbroker. The friend will do the same after receiving the letter. Eventually, most letters reach the stockbroker after five or six steps. This is where the concept of six degrees of separation (also called "six-dimensional space") comes from. Many fans of the Sixth Degree know this story and regard it as the Bible. But I ask everyone to pay attention to the important difference between this story and the concept of our now popular SNS websites. In this story, it is true that the letter reached the hands of the Boston stockbroker, but please note that throughout the entire process, everyone's friendship relationship did not change. Yes, this is very important. The message conveyed in this story, and what do the SNS websites we see now hope to convey among users? It’s contact information and friendship.
Having said this, I would like to mention the previously mentioned experiment of buying tickets by Torch. In that experiment, what was actually transmitted was information, not friendship.
(3) Cost and incentive of transmission - damping problem
In Stanley Milgram’s experiment and the torch experiment, there is no cost, or it seems that the cost is 0 . But is the cost really 0? It costs very little to send a letter to everyone, and it costs nothing to change the name of MSN. However, those people who are willing to do this are actually doing it for the sake of their friends. So what is the actual cost here? It is what the Chinese call a favor debt, a so-called relationship cost. No one likes a person who needs help here and there all day long. Favor debts are the same as money debts. If you bear them, you must pay them back. This is the cost issue in transmission.
After the Torch train experiment, we have been thinking about this problem. Today we are in urgent need of tickets. We can ask our friends to change their names, but can we use this method every day to find help? Buy a bus ticket today and a football ticket tomorrow, maybe once or twice, but if you do it too often, your friends will definitely get bored and even give up on you as a friend.
Gmail’s invitation method is still praised by many people today. When it first appeared, an invitation could even be sold for $60. Many people exclaimed that this was the greatest marketing ever. However, today, many people's invitations have become impossible to send out. Why? Because Gmail was a scarce item at the beginning, its value was high. In addition, Gmail had Google's strong brand and high user identity, so it became even more sought after, and owning Gmail became a symbol of honor. This honor became the incentive for Gmail invitations to spread wildly in the Six Degrees network. However, as Gmail became highly popular, this sense of honor gradually declined, eventually reducing incentives and bringing communication to a standstill.
Is damping good or bad? We can send information to anyone without resistance. Every SNS website promotes that you only need six degrees to get to know Clinton or Gates, but how many people actually get to know them? Is it because they are not worth knowing? No, it's because although the connection seems to be only six degrees, the damping at each degree may be insurmountable. But don’t be pessimistic. If there is no damping, you may be even more unhappy! LLF calculated, "For example. Suppose everyone has 30 friends, and the information passed through six degrees is 30 to the 6th power = 729000000. The number is enough to reach a level that can cover all possible people." If the six-degree connection Without any dampening, it is estimated that the various messages we receive from Six Degrees of Friends every day will make our heads explode.
In our lives, the higher the status and the more famous a person is, the more friends he will have, so the less he wants to expand his circle of relationships casually, because they often cannot win. Its disturbing. The leak of the contact information of 600 entertainment celebrities a few days ago is an example. As a member of society, we all have six degrees of contact with these 600 celebrities. However, one day because their contact information was made public, their contact with us was immediately disclosed. Flattening becomes one degree. In an instant, the resistance disappeared and you could call Na Ying and Tian Zhen at will. Didn't you want to talk about movies with Feng Xiaogang? You can make a call now. However, we can only say that it turned out to be a disaster. Many celebrities complained that many people called their homes and said, "Are you XXX? I like you very much!" and then hung up. Many people couldn't bear the disturbance and stopped their phones or even changed their numbers.
This disaster is an interesting story for those of us outsiders. What is interesting is that once the relationship between these celebrities and the public flattened (six degrees became one degree), their feelings towards The value of the public has also begun to disappear. The public can only call and ask, and then show off that they have called the celebrity, that's all. This huge flattening project has not expanded the circle of friends of the star-chasers, they are still far away from those stars...
(4) The assumption that friends of friends are friends - the direction and transmission issues of relationships
Perhaps the favorite saying on SNS websites is "Friends of friends are friends". However, LLF and I talked about this issue when we were chatting on Msn that day. I know someone A's friend someone B. He is a guy that I dislike very much, and among my friends there is a person named C who hates that guy named B even more. Therefore, in the current SNS service, I dare not introduce certain A and certain C at the same time, because if they are introduced at the same time, the most likely result is that certain B and certain C will start to quarrel after establishing contact.
Six Degrees of Separation
In the 1960s, Milgram, a social psychologist at Harvard University in the United States, proposed the theory of "Six Degrees of Separation". To put it simply, "six degrees of separation" means that in this society, it takes up to six people (including these two people) to establish a connection between any two people, regardless of whether they know each other or not, living in any place on the earth. In a remote place, there are only six degrees of separation between them.