The concept of six degrees of separation is an idea that continues to fascinate a lot of people, including the hyperconnected.

Techcrunch featured an article yesterday that suggests that the degrees of separation between people are shrinking as technology improves as more people share their passions and interests online.

As you may recall – I wrote a series of articles about hyperconnectivity and six degrees of separation a few weeks ago - the six degrees of separation concept was popularized by writer John Guare in the 1990s, represented in both a play and a movie called Six Degrees of Separation. The concept, describing the average number of connections that separate people, emerged from experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s.

The Techcrunch article discusses a study conducted for French mobile carrier O2 which, while not necessarily indicative of the general population, showed that their test group of people could link to a random set of strangers by using shared interests within three degrees.

Put another way, if you were in an online group that identified you as being, say, a baseball fan, then you could connect to other baseball fans within these groups with no more than three degrees of separation OR you could connect by using your network of baseball fans to connect to a random stranger.

It’s an interesting study. Again, even in a hyperconnected age, I wouldn’t feel confident in saying that we have consistently halved the degrees of separation between everyone in the world – the O2 study doesn’t make that claim either. However, the collection of hyperconnectivity, social media sites that feature shared interests, and a growing desire to communicate with a wider range of people will likely continue to reduce the six degrees of separation.

As always, I’m curious to know what other people think? Is the world really getting smaller? Do you find it easier to connect with other people that you barely know who lives many, many miles away from you? Is hyperconnectivity important?

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