By Doug Bedell / Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
Published 10-27-1998
Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi once calculated that technology would someday enable contact with any human on the planet through 5.83 people.
Free Internet sites such as Six Degrees (www.sixdegrees.com) are using cyberspace to make the predictions of the 19th-century telegraphy pioneer a 20th-century reality.
With an architecture that builds ever-widening rings of business and social associations, Six Degrees allows users to exchange information with a growing database of more than 1 million people worldwide.
“If you think about the things most successful on the Internet, they are those that replicate something that already works,” says Andrew Weinreich, Six Degrees president and chief executive. “We know networking works between people.
“We’re just making it more efficient.”
No-charge bulletin boards, e-mail service and online messaging are offered to those who fill out a brief information form and list e-mail addresses for 10 friends, relatives or business associates. They comprise your first degree. The entire Six Degrees network of people is the sixth degree. In between are the circles of associations formed by the friends of friends and the contacts each invites on board.
“Say you’re coming out of college and you want to be a lawyer in Dallas,” says Mr. Weinreich, a 30-year-old lawyer and former investment banker who dropped everything last year to start MacroView Communications Corp., parent of Six Degrees. “You say, ‘Who knows an environmental lawyer in Dallas?’
You want advice. We give you a shot at that.”
The interaction, he stresses, doesn’t have to be work-related. “You can get a movie review from Siskel and Ebert, but wouldn’ t you rather hear it from friends you trust?” he asked.
Six Degrees’ popularity can be measured by participation. What started last year with 150 people in New York City has blossomed into a service that adds 4,000 members every 24 hours.
Users swear by its ability to find others across the globe with similar interests. From Fredrik Haren, a Swedish techie: “While in Tokyo, I thought it would be nice to meet some fellow interactive media people. The problem was that I did not know anybody in Japan. So I posted a question asking my first- and second-degree friends. … Today, I got an e-mail from a friend of someone in my second-degree who turns out to be a Swede working in Japan with interactive media.
“Right now, he is helping me book meetings with other companies in Japan, all thanks to Six Degrees.”
The set-up begs comparisons to a pyramid scheme, which can be illegal when money is exchanged on unfulfilled promises of great returns. But Six Degrees is driven by its own advertising scheme, not financing from users. It is a pyramid that peddles ads and Internet networking only.
The company goes to great lengths to assure users that it won’ t sell the personal information they provide, only raw data from occasional surveys.
A rigid policy prohibits spamming or “any form of mail that can be interpreted as junk mail or mail generated via a distribution list which the recipient has not specifically requested.” Six Degrees also is a certified member of TRUSTe, the business consortium that seeks to bolster consumer confidence in Internet security and truth-in-advertising.
By policy, Six Degrees won’t add anyone to a user’s list without e-mail confirmation that the person wants to join. It insists on planting cookies in users’ browsers and e-mail to help to ascertain users’ identities.
In exchange for traffic at its site, Six Degrees sells advertising on the site and its demographic information compiled from member questionnaires. Ads are sprinkled at every juncture, but users are not forced to sign up for anything as a condition of membership. Members are asked, however, to agree to sample at least one of several services, such as the Los Angeles Times Web site.
Logging in brings users their own personal bulletin board, where only their first-degree circle may post messages. A powerful internal search engine lets users locate those with similar interests, contact Six Degrees members worldwide and spin out from their sphere of influence.
A free yourname@USA.net email address is provided for all members of a users group, but it is not necessary to enter the Web site to check it. A mail-forwarding program permits notification whenever something new is entered in a user’s first-degree area.
Membership has other privileges. Premium savings are offered for Egghead Computers and other online vendors under agreement with Six Degrees. Mr. Weinreich says his company has had to constantly update its hardware because of the demands caused by rapid growth. But he vows to stay on top of the site’s wave of popularity.
“When we started, I said we were going to build the largest database in the world, a place where people can build a virtual community,” Mr. Weinreich says. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
