| In the "largest social network constructed and analyzed to date," Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University researchers investigated on a planetary scale the oft-cited report that people are separated by "six degrees of separation." Based on 30 billion Microsoft Messenger instant-message conversations among 240 million people, the study found that the average path length among Messenger users was 6.6. "Researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances," a Washington Post article stated. However, one publication, eFluxMedia, suggested the study was "heavily misinterpreted" by the media. "MSN Messenger users are not a random group of people. Their use of the Redmond company's instant messaging tool is already a selection which raises chances they can connect to each other in fewer hops. Furthermore, instant messaging itself is not a measure of real life connections. Also, somebody can have many contacts in their instant messenger client, without actually knowing them. Microsoft researchers considered acquaintances people who sent each other at least one message. But with the mass messages going around, that's hardly an accurate way of determining connections between people." In a related story, questioning the validity of inferences from potentially skewed or incomplete data, last week, Microsoft posted videos of a test involving about 140 randomly chosen computer users who had low opinions of Vista viewing a demo of a "new operating system" called "Mojave" (actually Vista), finding they liked it. Nevertheless, the New York Times stated, "many bloggers had problems with how the Mojave Experiment was conducted. The main complaint was: is 10 minutes of watching an expert demonstrate Vista a valid basis on which to assess it?" (Source: ) |
