Six degrees of texting

From BBC NEWS

A US study of text messages suggests the theory that we are all linked by six steps to anyone else may be right – though seven seems more accurate.

Microsoft researchers studied the addresses of 30bn text messages sent during a single month in 2006.

Any two people on average are linked by seven or fewer acquaintances, they say…

Wonder if this is the first study to be done on a global rather than a society-wide basis? Also, it rather undermines the conjecture — which I first saw, I think, in the Economist — that electronic connectivity was reducing the Milgram coefficient.