facebook degree of separation between contacts becomes closer – largest social network study ever released!

According to a recent study of the Università degli Studi di Milano the separation between contacts in facebook becomes closer. The researchers found out that the average distance between any two contacts is 4.74 contacts. In 2008 this value was 5.28. The average number of friends of all members is 100. The study is of great interest for social psychologists because there were 721 million active Facebook users examined – representing more than 10% of the global population and 69 billion friendships among them. Up to now this is the largest social network studies ever released.