Orkut & The Six Degrees of Separation

Recently, I was spending some time with this networking site called Orkut. (Somebody told me that MBA is all about networking).

Indian software engineers warming the benches of their respective companies need no introduction to the site. For the benefit of others, Orkut allows one to search for profiles of people based on names or a dozen other attributes which you wouldn't even have cared about in your friends (Fashion outlook, turn-ons, body art - to name a few). Once you click on a profile, the site pops-up the person's photo (which invariably turns out to be a movie star's or another nice looking guy's/gal's) and along with it neatly shows up a series of breadcrumbs to indicate how you are networked to the selected person. For want of better usage of time, I selected some 30 random profiles from the site (Did somebody say ISB keeps you busy?) and found that none of the network chains that linked me to the people had more than 6 breadcrumbs! Mmm..May be the theory of six degrees of separation which has been so bitterly protested has a grain of truth in it.

I should, however admit that it was quite surprising and a lot disturbing as well to note that I was not very far from all those phony characters lurking around in the site.