Are You Missing Out on Olive Tree Genealogy's Blog Posts?

An update on Google Friend Connect from Google: 

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs. 

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

HOW TO FOLLOW OLIVE TREE GENEALOGY BLOG
 
Here's the important part - if you use a non-Google Account to follow Olive Tree Genealogy blog, you will need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow my blog. With a Google Account, you’ll get blogs added to your Reading List, making it easier for you to see the latest posts and activity of all the blogs you follow.

Small World Experiment (6 Degrees of Separation)

 Yahoo  and Facebook are joining forces to test a social experiment that showed there are just six degrees of separation between most people on the planet.

The current Small World experiment -- anyone with a Facebook account can participate by going to http://smallworld.sandbox.yahoo.com -- could help determine that. The study is intended as academic social research and will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, said Watts, a widely recognized authority on social networks.

From the Small World Experiment website:

The Small World Experiment is designed to test the hypothesis that anyone in the world can get a message to anyone else in just "six degrees of separation" by passing it from friend to friend. Sociologists have tried to prove (or disprove) this claim for decades, but it is still unresolved.

Basically you sign up as a sender. You are given a target somewhere in the world, and a message to send. Using your Facebook account you send the message to one person. That person sends it on and so it goes until it reaches the intended target. Sounds like a bit of fun and you'll be helping social research.