Will Smith and Kevin Bacon may both know that there's no more than six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet. But the folks at Microsoft's research division now have quantifiable proof. Well, sort of.

Microsoft Research did a bit of analysis with raw MSN messenger data. Without actually reading any private messages, (the data all remained anonymous) the team tracked the trajectory of 255 billion instant messages sent by 240 million people in June of 2006. Researchers were able to see where the message started and where it ended up.

In the end, you get a pretty map like the one above showing where MSN Messenger users are located. And you can also see which users are chatting it up with one another. And in the end, the team concluded that you could pretty much make a connection between any random MSN Messenger user and another with just 6.6 connections. In other words, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend and a half of yours knows the person you may have just sent a message to.

Of course, the data only covers MSN Messenger statistics and doesn't take into account all the people using AOL, Yahoo!, or Google messengers, not to mention all the folks who don't IM or even have access to computers at all. But next time someone tells you that whole six degrees thing if bunk, now you can point them toward empircal(ish) proof.

[via Mashable and Nature]