Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Following on from my earlier post on viral marketing, the BBC has an apparently unrelated story that is both fun and really quite fascinating. It notes that for decades, scientists have tried to prove that the world is made up of social networks that are ultimately interconnected. The theory that there were "six degrees of separation" between everyone - with each degree being a person they knew - entered the mainstream with a play, a Will Smith film, and a party game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.



Now however, scientists for instance, used data from the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game to see if there was actually a mathematical basis for this complex set of relationships. They discovered a formula for the invisible links that make the big world small. Other scientists examined the importance of hubs in how these kinds of networks evolved. A new discipline - network science - was established and other scientists gladly applied these universal laws to other kinds of networks, such as the world-wide web, the growth of cities, global travel, sexual relations between people, wealth and property distribution, and protein molecules in cells.

What's my point? Well, I'm really reporting this because a) it's kind of fun and b) if everyone in the world is just six handshakes away, what opportunities might that mean for marketing and promoting African films in a new digital age?