4 ms·
>The average distance between any two of Facebook’s 1.5 billion users is 4.74 edges. Sorry Kevin. With 1.5 billion users the whole graph can be explored within
by haraldurt 11y ago
>The average distance between any two of Facebook’s 1.5 billion users is 4.74 edges. Sorry Kevin. With 1.5 billion users the whole graph can be explored within 5 hops.
Nitpicking here, but that does not follow. Starting from a random user and hopping 5 times in all directions you'd expect to explore about half of the graph.
- fnbr 11y agoYour post is technically correct, but I think that you'd be likelier to explore more- say, 80% of the graph. I suspect that there are small pockets of extremely unconnected people which creates a long tail, distorting the mean.
- eggie 11y agoUnless the data can somehow be shared how is anyone to know what the structure is? There is no point in speculating...
- cortesoft 11y agoYeah, I noticed that, too. Just because 4.74 is the average doesn't tell you enough to know how many people you will reach by exploring 5 hops. Also, they clearly are not including unconnected people in their calculation - there are lots of people who are probably unconnected to the general population. I know from when I used to work on facebook apps that I had a few accounts only connected to each other.