Analysis of six degrees of separation in Facebook using Ant colony optimization

Abstract

Six degrees of separation is a popular theory that is widely accepted by many people, which states any two people on this world can be connected through an average number of six steps. Though there is no solid scientific evidence that the six degrees of separation theory is true, it remains as an area of interest to social researches. With the advent of digital mapping, the theory can now be tested with social networks, but will the theory of six degrees of separation hold for the virtual world? The link between any two people in a graph with number of hops needs to be identified and that can be done efficiently with the help of Ant colony optimization technique (ACO). As ACO algorithms are proved to be efficient with a broad range of NP hard problems such as the traveling salesman problem (TSP) or the quadratic assignment problem (QAP), and is increasingly gaining interest for solving real life engineering and scientific problems, an attempt has been made in this paper to analyze the six degrees of separation in the popular social network Facebook which has over 1.3 billion active users as of June 2014.

A Comparative Study of Social Network Tools for Analysing Chinese Elites

“…Experiments have shown that the average middle acquaintances constituted of about six people, and this discovery has since been known as the "Six Degrees of Separation" [2]. The theory became the foundation for the social network theory, and many experiments have revealed that people can theoretically use six acquaintances to ultimately reach any other person [3][4]. This theory in combination with Milgram's findings has given rise to numerous other interesting research on social networks.…”

Online Social Networking in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language

“…(Rouse, n.d.). The social networking that is based on the "six degrees of separation concept" (Lawrence & Latha, 2015) enables the people from any part of the world establish connections with the people in any other part via interconnected online communities that are in turn based on the theory that a person in one part of the world can be connected with a person in any other of the world by no more than three intermediaries. See the following link for a brief history of the social media (https://youtu.be/bi3DoRWngOs).…”

Packet-Forwarding Algorithm in DTN Based on the Pheromone of Destination Node

“…On the basis of the six degrees of separation theory [6], we consider that the distance between the edge and core node should not be more than four relay nodes. We suppose that the network topology does not change before the maximum community with four relayers between the edge node and the core node.…”

“…First, we can compute the communication capability between the neighbor and core nodes according to the analysis of the connections and disconnections between them, which can be the analog pheromone of the core node. Second, we apply the six degrees of separation theory [6] to spread the analog pheromone to nearby nodes within a four-hop distance. The community can then be constructed based on the analog pheromone of the core node.…”