Thanks (as ever) to Bruce Hoppe for pointing me to Centrality, a group blog with both social network analysis and social software luminaries posting on a regular basis. The former group is led by Stan Wasserman, and the latter by Stowe Boyd. The site is supported by Visible Path, and contains both industry news (about social networking sites, services, and the like), but also some fine distinctions in social networking language.

The current language topic is “degrees” as in “six degrees of separation.” It is possible to trace the actual phrase to the play, Six Degrees of Separation, and to find historical reference to SNA research that came up with that magic number. However, it does not appear possible to alter the common usage of “degrees” as “number of hops” or “number of links” between people. Stan Wasserman points out (in some agony, apparently) that it should be six ties, and not degrees. Paths have lengths but only people (nodes) can have degrees. I stand corrected myself and will henceforth have a nice story to tell in my MasterClasses. The thread is worth following.