Ravi's Rants

Rndaom, Yet <Well Formed/>

  • Ravi’s Favorite Movies

A Small World Phenomenon

11/29/2005 By Ravi Jayagopal Leave a Comment

Small World Phenomenon

He never took a single psychology course as an undergraduate at Queens College.

Initially rejected because he did not have enough background in psychology, he was accepted after he took six psychology courses at three different schools in New York.

The American Psychological Association (APA) put Milgram’s membership application on hold when questions were raised about the validity of his research.

Yet he would go on to become one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century.

In what was dubbed as the “small world experiment”, he sent 60 letters to random volunteers in Wichita, Kansas and asked them to forward it to a person they had never met or heard about – they could pass on the letter to anyone they knew who they thought would be able to get the letter one step closer to the target, either directly or through “their” friend. It is said that those letters passed through an average of – you guessed it right, six people – to reach the destination.

This was the basis for his theory that any two random people in the U.S. were connected by an an average of just six people, famously called the “six degrees of separation”.

Stanley Milgram‘s research went on to note that not all the degrees were equal – that there was a “funneling” effect in place, whereby most of the letters eventually forwarded to the destination, were done so by the same few (2-3) people.

Author Malcolm Gladwell calls these people as “Connectors” in his book, The Tipping Point, which is based on the same “funneling” effect that Milgram talked about.

This theory later spawned movies, TV shows, games and even a now-extinct web site, sixdegrees.com .

“Small world” or not, we’re all truly connected – in many weird ways.

Otherwise, out of the 22+ million blogs, why would you be reading this post?

Filed Under: Ravi's Rants

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About Ravi Jayagopal

Ravi Jayagopal

Ravi Jayagopal is a full-time entrepreneur living in sunny San Diego, CA . He is the Co-Founder & Co-Developer of DigitalAccessPass.com (DAP), the premier Membership Plugin & Content Delivery Platform for WordPress. Check out his Podcast about Membership Sites & Online Courses, at SubscribeMe.fm. Ravi is also the creator of CoolCastPlayer.com, a pretty and powerful podcast player plugin for WordPress. And creator of S3MediaVault.com, S3 Video Player for Amazon S3. Ravi first started selling online in 1997. Check out his book "Subscribe Me: Making, Marketing & Monetizing Online Digital Content with Membership Sites, Online Courses and Subscriptions"


Ravi is also the host of the "Subscribe Me" podcast at SubscribeMe.fm

Contact Ravi

Don't Miss a Post!
Free Updates
By Email

 

Recent Posts

  • I Create For Creators
  • Skyscraper
  • Do you prefer listening to a podcast that is edited? Or nah?
  • Pirates Keep Out
  • Sands of Time
  • Proud Quitter
  • MYSTERY: Guess what I’m trying to highlight in the picture?
  • Radio is (almost) dead
  • If your want your neighbors to start mowing their lawn
  • Disney Slow Pass

Archives

  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • August 2018
  • March 2018
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • August 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • September 2015
  • March 2015
  • November 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • May 2013
  • January 2013
  • September 2012
  • April 2012
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • September 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • November 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005

    follow me on Twitter

     

    Want to give credits to your members just like Audible.com does? Then checkout our Credit Storeplugin.

    No Business Like E-Business

    Available at: NBLEB.com & Amazon.com

    Digital Access Pass

    DigitalAccessPass.com is an incredibly powerful Membership Script for WordPress. It has an inbuilt "ContentResponder", Affiliate Program, Email Autoresponder, Email Broadcasting, and more.

    Links

    • DigitalAccessPass.com
    • NBLEB.com (book)
    • Ravi's Favorite Movies
    • S3MediaVault.com
    • Techiiies.com

    Categories

    • Adsense
    • Advertising
    • AdWords
    • Alerts
    • Amazon
    • App Store
    • Apple
    • Atom
    • Automation
    • Blog
    • Branding
    • Business
    • Business Tools
    • Change
    • Code Snippets
    • Competitors
    • Content Creation
    • Content Marketing
    • Cool Sites
    • Cool Stuff
    • Copywriting
    • Coupons
    • Customer Service
    • Customers
    • DAP
    • Digital Access Pass (DAP)
    • Downloads
    • E-Business
    • Email
    • Entrepreneurs
    • FaceBook
    • Famous Quotes
    • Feeds
    • Firefox
    • Free
    • Free Software
    • Funny
    • God
    • Google
    • Hosting
    • How-To
    • Humor
    • I Don't Get It
    • Industry News
    • Inspirational
    • Instagram
    • Interesting Facts
    • Internet
    • Internet Marketing
    • iPad
    • iPhone
    • iPod
    • Jargon
    • JavaScript
    • Life
    • Live
    • Marketing
    • Mashups
    • Microblogging
    • Microsoft
    • Mobile Apps
    • Mozilla
    • Online
    • Online Reputation
    • Online Services
    • Paid Software
    • Peer-to-Peer
    • Penny-wise
    • Permission
    • Personal Tools
    • Philosophy
    • PHP
    • PHP Code
    • PHP Scripts
    • Ping
    • Podcast
    • Podcasting
    • PPC
    • Pricing
    • Product Development
    • Productivity
    • Publicity
    • Purple Cow
    • Radio
    • Ravi Recommends
    • Ravi's Rants
    • Remarkable
    • RSS
    • Scripts-n-Software
    • SEO
    • Seth Godin
    • Side Hustle
    • Sitemaps
    • Social Media
    • Spam
    • Steve Jobs
    • SubscribeMe.fm
    • SubscribeMeBook.com
    • Technology
    • Technorati
    • This Versus That
    • Timepass
    • Tools
    • Torrents
    • Twitter
    • Un-Remarkable
    • Uplifting
    • ventriloquism
    • Video
    • Video
    • Viral
    • Virtual Reality
    • Web2.0
    • Webmaster
    • WordPress
    • WTF
    • YouTube

    If this were a membership site, it would be Powered by DAP