Why a Facebook Post Goes Viral

Six degrees of separation refers to the concept that if a person is one rung away from each person they know and two rungs away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, the mathematical progression indicates that everyone is approximately six rungs away from each person on Earth. 

In 1990, an American playwright John Guare wrote the play Six Degrees of Separation that, in 1993, was adapted for the screen. Soon other television and cinema scripts would incorporate the concept, launching the phrase into everyday lexicon. 

The game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon posits the challenge to link any actor in a movie with Kevin Bacon through no more than six progressions.  I tried this using Johnny Sneed an obscure bit actor. At the fourth association he was connected to Kevin Bacon. 

Play this game using any actor or actress. You will be amazed at the connections. 

A Columbia University professor, Duncan Watts, used 48,000 e-mail senders in 157 countries to demonstrate a package delivery to complete strangers around the world. The average number of messages to deliver packages around the world was just under six. 

A study examining data from 30 billion conversations among 240 million people found that the degree of separation before a world-wide connection was 6.6. 

In the book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell compared change in social phenomena with the spread of infectious diseases. Gladwell contends that social actions sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. 

A Facebook entry, a YouTube post, the development of a “must have” product, the popularity of a movie—all these sudden changes---the tipping point can result from social epidemics. 

According to Gladwell, the tipping point in social change results from the confluence of three types of people that he calls agents of change: 

1. Salesmen are charismatic people who have a trait that makes others want to be in agreement with them. I suspect you can recall a relative or friend who could sell cookies to a Girl Scout.
2. Mavens accumulate a wide-range of knowledge and share it with others. 
3. Connectors have a special gift of making friends with just about everyone. 

Randomly take a list of 250 surnames from a phone book. Go down the list and give yourself a point every time you see a surname that is shared by someone you know. The higher the score the more connected you are. Twenty out of 250 surnames is an average score.

Gladwell has given this test to almost 400 people. Of those 400 people tested, eight people found 90 surnames out of 250 randomly selected surnames that were shared by someone they knew. Four out of 400 tested found over 100 random surnames that were possessed by someone they knew. 

Connectors bring to mind a friend of mine, Jeff Savell. Jeff seems to know just about everyone. Go to a large party and over 80% of the guests know Jeff. At international conferences just about everyone from all over the world know Jeff. At a Texas A&M football game the fans in his section, the yell leaders, and the coaches wave at Jeff. The school mascot, Reveille, wags her tail when Jeff approaches.  

Perhaps I exaggerate a little but Jeff’s connector type engenders this apocryphal story: 

Jeff is given a private audience with the Pope. During their meeting the Pope invites Jeff to accompany him on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square and wave to the huge crowd below. A couple of friends in the crowd look up at the two men waving from the balcony. One asks the other to identify the two people on the balcony. His friend replies, “I don’t know the guy wearing the white cassock and zucchetto, but the man standing next to him is Jeff Savell.” 

We are all connected, perhaps not as dramatically as Jeff, but we are all linked nonetheless. Lets use our connections to spread good will, positive messages, joy, encouragement and love to those we know. Perhaps those Facebook messages will connect to strangers all around the world.