Well, folks, the idea that there are six degrees of separation, that is, that there are six acquaintances separating any two people on earth is so last century. According to researchers at the University of Milan and Facebook, there are now 4.74 degrees of separation on average after analyzing analyzing one month of data from Facebook’s 721 million users (1/10th of the total population of the earth!).

So it is that there are on average less than five acquaintances separating the real housewife who lives next door to you and Kim Zolciak, or between you and Snooki. There may be an enormous cultural gap, an impenetrable language barrier or large geographical distances between you and a randomly selected person on the other side of the planet, you likely have close preexisting ties with them, at least socially speaking.

While there are undoubtedly hundreds if not thousands of implications to this finding, it is clearer to me now that even the humblest person exerts an influence on the rest of the world, for better or for worse. You don’t have to be a “person of influence” to be influential. Neither do you need your own reality show to touch the lives of those near and far. You simply have to be you.

It’s a small world after all (until, that is, you have to paint it).