Twitter Friends: What Are The Odds You Exist & Found Each Other?

Yesterday when I was on Twitter having a good ‘ol time tweeting it up with my friends, I started wondering what the odds were that those particular people decided to follow me on Twitter and that we became friends. There are hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, so what are the chances that anyone specifically follows anyone?

If you read the article that everyone was talking about last week about the five degrees of separation on Facebook, it might start to seem more logical at first. It might start to seem like there is a method to the madness of some people finding other people. However, think about it more.

Let’s just take my Twitter friends for example. Each one of those people is very special because he or she had to be born in the same era of history as me, Twitter had to start when it did, and it had to become popular enough that we both noticed it. We both had to sign up for the service, we had to find each other, and one of us had to follow back. Then, after all that, we had to be paying attention enough on Twitter to notice each other’s tweets. We also had to be part of the small percentage of people who doesn’t quit Twitter after setting up an account, and the small percentage of people who answers their “@” replies.

If you think about it that way, every single person on Twitter who we engage with is very special. Is it fate that we found each other, or is it all just one massive coincidence? The very first thing I listed above is that both people had to be born in the same era of history. According to this infographic below, it was truly a miracle that each one of us was even born in the first place. Think about all the life events that had to fall into place just to make that happen! You can read the original article with all the stats here on one of the Harvard Law blogs. This is one of the best illustrations I’ve ever seen to show that anything is possible.