In Twitter Six Degrees of Separation Are Actually Five

A new study just released reveals that, in Twitter, you don't need six degrees of separation to reach most everyone. In fact, five will do just fine. 

Sysomos, a social media measurement company, analyzed over 5.2 billion Twitter connections and came to some interesting conclusions:

• The "Six Degrees of Separation" for Twitter is actually five.
• On average, a Twitter user will encounter 83% of all other Twitter users by visiting everyone's friends up to a distance of five steps. Sysomos says this means that the Twitter network has good social connectivity, and that, in theory, a re-tweet (RT) does not have to propagate that much to reach a potentially large number of people!
• There are many small, circular connections on Twitter. If you look at your friends, and their friends, you will find someone who follows you.

Again, these finding are based on analysis of over 5.2 billion friend relationships on Twitter. If you want to learn more, continue reading on http://sysomos.com/insidetwitter/sixdegrees/.

I don't know who would be willing to expend the time to drill down five levels to see if that's the case. (I'm betting not even Kevin Bacon would do so.) 

The question I have then is, how does this information help me? Will it enable me to grow my network more effectively and efficiently than I am able to now? It's a question I'm putting before sysomos via an interview, hopefully within the next week. 

How about you...what benefit do you see?