An online social network collects descriptive data about various
individuals and allows those individuals to indicate other individuals
with whom they have a personal relationship. The descriptive data and the
relationship data are integrated and processed to reveal the series of
social relationships connecting any two individuals within a social
network. A maximum degree of separation setting is provided and set to at
least two. The maximum degree of separation setting limits the amount of
searching that is carried out when searching for a connection between two
individuals in the social network.