You Can Navigate Between Any Two Websites In 19 Clicks Or Fewer 185
An anonymous reader writes "A study done by a Hungarian physicist found that of the billions of websites and over a trillion objects on the web, any given two are separated by no more than 19 clicks. 'Distributed across the entire web, though, are a minority of pages—search engines, indexes and aggregators—that are very highly connected and can be used to move from area of the web to another. These nodes serve as the "Kevin Bacons" of the web, allowing users to navigate from most areas to most others in less than 19 clicks. Barabási credits this "small world" of the web to human nature—the fact that we tend to group into communities, whether in real life or the virtual world. The pages of the web aren't linked randomly, he says: They're organized in an interconnected hierarchy of organizational themes, including region, country and subject area. Interestingly, this means that no matter how large the web grows, the same interconnectedness will rule.'"
Like most overgeneralizations... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, there are objects behind paywalls that, all by themselves, can be more than 19 clicks away from a highly unrelated web page elsewhere online There are objects which are online that have no external links to them at all. And those are just the obvious ones.
It's an interesting notion, but it's incorrect.
What a waste of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like most overgeneralizations... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Assuming they're linked at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like most overgeneralizations... (Score:4, Insightful)
Many times it's not the author being overenthusiastic but the media reports.
Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Assuming they're linked at all (Score:2, Insightful)
If it is physically connected to the rest of the "World Wide Web" then it is part of the "World Wide Web".
The lack of interested parties linking to it has no bearing.