Microsoft researchers looked at data from the company's MSN Messenger instant messaging system and found out that, on average, people were separated by 6.6 other people. Thus, on average, anybody could be connected with anybody through seven of their subsequent acquaintances.

While many have seen the study as a boost to the "six degrees of separation" theory, conceived by U.S. researcher Stanley Milgram, after experiments in which he asked people to pass a letter only to others they knew by name, there are other factors as well which need to be considered.

The first is that 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. In real life, you would need to divide the figures by at least a factor of ten. Furthermore, Microsoft Messenger users are not really "global", they are mostly Americans.

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. The study apparently did not look at contact lists, only messages sent, which is by no standard an accurate source of statistical data.

The six-degrees-of-separation theory, put forward in the 1960s, claimed that on average everybody is actually linked to everybody else by just six or fewer acquaintances, or degrees of separation. As previous studies, the Microsoft study actually invalidates this theory which was already proven an urban myth. However, the Microsoft study highlights that, probably, within the United States, two people are linked, on average, by about 30 acquaintances, whereas globally figures are probably much higher. Also, there are people who are not linked at all between them.

So, no, actually you're not six degrees from Kevin Bacon!