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Here's where I'd guess you're wrong: "my friends visit cnn with equal probability as other Facebook users". CNN visitors are likely to be highly grouped, plus you can share these stories back to Facebook and with your friends, increasing this clusteredness.

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Also, consider this: you share an article with your 300 friends on Facebook, liking it before you do. Your friends see the article, and of the first 20, 4 of them also like it. The next one of your friends will to see the article will have at least one friend (you!) who liked it, up to five. Not bad that way. If you're randomly browsing, of course you're going to find fewer articles that your friends have liked -- it's random!

Yeah, and I would expect the clustering becomes tighter when you move from a general site like CNN to a much more focused site like HN.

I guess the value depends on the content and who your friends are!

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