Hi! My name is Randy Lubin and today we're going to conduct an experiment. The goal is to explore the social network of Listserve members.
Summary:
Each participant will start an email chain that will eventually reach me, but only by going through friends / acquaintances. By analyzing the chains we can learn about the structures of our social networks.
Rule 1: If you know Randy Lubin, forward this email to [email protected] and included your current city
Rule 2: If you don't know Randy Lubin, forward these instructions to someone you know, who might know him.
Rule 3: As you forward the email, include your current city (I'm going to map out the different chains)
A bit about me to help you in your quest:
1) I am 26 years old and grew up in Livingston, New Jersey
2) I went to undergrad at Washington University in St. Louis and graduated in 2009
3) I went to Stanford for an MBA and graduated in 2011
4) I live in San Francisco, California
5) I'm active in the tech / startup scene and work for a company called Jive Software
As the email chains start reaching my inbox, I'm going to create a map of all the different paths. I'll also write up some interesting insights from the data and share them with all of the participants.
This could be very interesting - I hope you enjoy this!
Take care,
Randy Lubin
[email protected]
San Francisco, CA
p.s. this is based on the Small World Experiments by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. Check it out on Wikipedia if you want to learn more - it's tied closely with the concept of 'six degrees of separation'.