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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – Play Yourself via LinkedIn

By: Loren Wassell | 11/20/2009

About 15 years ago, three Pennsylvania college students dreamed up the parlor game that came to be known as "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Theoretically, you can reach almost everyone in movies within six steps of Kevin. 

For example, early film legend Charles Chaplin has a "Bacon Number" of three.  His famous 1940 movie, The Great Dictator, included Don Brodie in the cast.  Brodie has a Bacon Number of two, because he appeared in East My Dust in 1976 with Rance Howard.  Howard achieved a Bacon Number of one when he appeared in Frost/Nixon last year with Bacon himself. 

There's a Web site called www.OracleofBacon.org that figures these things for you with the 800,000 people in the International Movie Database.  Like a chain letter, the numbers grow dramatically.  Bacon has worked with a lot of people in his career; every one of them has worked with many more and so forth. 

Now, you can play yourself - even if you're not in show business.  Kevin Bacon is on LinkedIn, along with about 50 million of us.  When I put his name in, I was surprised to learn my own Bacon Number is three.  Two of my connections are connected to someone directly connected to Bacon himself. 

Turns out, I am even closer to President Obama.  Two of my contacts are directly connected to the president via LinkedIn.  The vast social network is a smaller world than we might think.

After you've indulged your own star-hunting on LinkedIn, you ought to visit www.SixDegrees.org.  That's a site that Kevin Bacon sponsors along with Network for Good to help channel donations to non-profit organizations.  The number of dollars you give to a worthwhile organization may not improve your Bacon Number, but it could do a lot more tangible good.

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