Are any of you familiar with the term, “Six Degrees of Separation?” What it means is that any one person is less than six people away from you. For example, if I want to meet Michael Jordan, the famous basketball player, I am within six contacts of actually meeting him.
Think about it. That is a pretty powerful idea. No matter who the person is, or where they are, I have a shot at making that contact.
Take it one step further and apply it to Web 2.0 and blogging. Keep in mind, this is just my personal theory, and I haven’t seen it published anywhere else - so I might as well do it.
Web 2.0 and blogging reduces the “Six Degrees of Separation” to something much less. It might be two, or even one. The idea between the new Web is that everything is connected through the network. People, places, things, ideas, and events. Which means that in order for you to get in touch with any of the above, it might only take one or two contacts in between.
For example, I might want to meet Guy Kawasaki. In order to get in front of him, I need only to visit his blog and comment. He might respond, he might not - but I communicated with him with nobody in between facilitating that connection.
That is why I think blogging and social networks and this whole new Internet are so powerful. Six Degrees of Separation no longer exists. In reality it is something more akin to “Single Degree of Separation” with the connector being a network.