We Make eCommerce Simple for Small Businesses
  SEOsamraat
  • SEO Home
    • SEO for Corporates >
      • Beat Your Competition With SEO
    • Power Searching
    • Keyword Research
    • SEO Best Practices
    • Types of SEO
    • SEO for Images
    • Optimized Content
    • SEO Tools
    • Webmaster Tools
    • SEO History
    • Future of SEO
    • SEO Basic Consulting
  • Workspace Home
    • Store It All on Drive
    • Move Write with Docs
    • Work with Sheets
    • Collaborate with Slides
    • Win Big Thru Sites
    • Sync Calendars to Meet
    • Get Secure with Vault
    • Get a Quote
  • Online Reputation Home
    • ORM Security
    • ORM Keywords
    • ORM Hiring and Training
    • ORM Legal Landscape
    • ORM Social Media Policy
    • ORM Tools
    • ORM Branding
    • ORM Goals
    • ORM Strategy
  • Blog
  • Digital Products
    • Password Creation Checklist
    • Glossary of ORM Terms

What's your dunbar number?

18/3/2014

0 Comments

 
 Most people have a few hundred ‘friends’ in Social Networks like Facebook. For some, it stretches to thousands. But for the hindrance that Facebook caps the number of ‘friends’ anyone can have in individual profiles at 5,000, some are capable of adding ‘friends’ indefinitely. Just look at the Profile Pages of celebrities, some of which feature a few million fans.

THE LIMIT UNDER ASSAULT
All of this calls into question the received wisdom that the maximum number of relationships any individual can hope to have with others is about 150. It’s known as the Dunbar Number in honour of Robin Dunbar, the Evolutionary Psychologist who advanced the concept. He interest in the topic was kindled when he was studying social groupings among monkeys and apes, where he found a connection between the sizes of the individual neocortexes of the animals, and the size of their social group. He then extrapolated these findings to humans (we are their cousins after all), and based on the size of our neocortex, calculated that social relationships with more than 150 people at a time is not possible for humans. So 150 is the Dunbar Number.

At first blush, the Dunbar Number may look outdated in this day and age. And it appears that a case can be made about technological advancements effectively shattering all existing limitations in making friends, ‘friending’, to put it in Facebook parlance.

There are also others who caution about viewing the Dunbar Number as an absolute limit, and point out that a distinction should be made between people whom we directly know (which again is split into strong and weak ties), and those who are in our networks.

THREE DEGREES OF CONNECTIONS
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has tried to promote the terms First-, Second-, and Third-Degree connections through his book The Start-Up of You. The First-Degree consists of people whom we directly know, and the Second-Degree is made up of friends of friends, not all of whom we may know. Finally, there’s the Third-Degree, which is all about friends of friends of friends (whew), which really stretches the extent of people whom we can potentially leverage, without knowing them in person.

So what’s the conclusion on the Dunbar Number? Is it still relevant? A couple of years ago, the editors of The Economist magazine had the same doubt, and decided that the best place to clear it would be Facebook itself. So they knocked on the doors of Cameron Marlow, the resident Sociologist at Facebook, and asked him to crunch some numbers (‘Primates on Facebook, The Economist, Feb. 26, 2009’). Marlow found that the average number of ‘friends’ on the Facebook network is 120, which seems to agree with the Dunbar hypothesis. But since some people had very large networks the magazine concluded that the finding didn’t prove the Dunbar hypothesis. But again Marlow gave them one more interesting insight: the number of people with whom the average male on Facebook interacts is a lowly seven. Women do better, at 10! The interactions considered were comments in the Wall, photos, status updates, etc. When two-way interactions were considered (emails, chats, etc.), it was found that the average guy has time for only four people, while women were a little more generous, finding time for six!

Based on all this, The Economist editors seemed to be hinting that to use the word ‘friends’ to describe people in someone’s Social Network would be a bit rich. In their view, what’s now going up is merely the number of casual contacts that people track passively. “Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently, but they still have the same circles of intimacy as ever,” they concluded.

Now what’s your Dunbar Number?

e.o.m.

0 Comments

    Archives

    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    April 2013

    Author

    I'm Georgy S. Thomas, the chief SEO architect of SEOsamraat. The Searchable site will track interesting developments in the world of Search Engine Optimization, both in India as well as abroad.

    Categories

    All
    30th Annual TED Conference
    A/B Testing
    Adsense
    Adwords
    Aggregation
    Airgapped Computers
    Alex Gawley
    Algorithms
    Amazon
    Andreessen Horowitz
    Andy Conrad
    Astro Teller
    Ben Horowitz
    Bill Gross
    Bing
    Bitcoin
    Boston Dynamics
    Brand Management
    Brin
    Buchheit
    Business Insider
    Cailliau
    Charlie Rose
    Code Messages
    Coders
    Competitive Analysis
    Credit Card
    Crown Jewels
    CSAT
    Cutomers
    Cyberattackers
    Cyber Criminals
    Cybersecurity
    Cyber Security
    Cyber Siberia
    DATA PROTECTION
    David Krane
    DeepMind
    Digital Assassination
    Digital Innovation
    Diversity
    Donkey Kong
    Douglas
    Douglas Edwards
    Doxing
    Driverless Car
    Dunbar Number
    EBook
    Ebooksearch
    Ebookseller
    Ebooksellers
    Ecommerce
    English Auction
    Facebook
    Facebook Page
    Fetch As Google Tool
    Financial Times
    Flat Organization
    Flicker
    Fortune
    Fraudulent Activity
    Generic Names
    Giant Target Corp
    Gmail
    Google
    Google Analytics Tool
    Google Apps
    Google Chauffeur
    Google Maps
    Google Search
    Google Story
    Google X
    GoTo.com
    Greg Boser
    Gregg Steinhafel.
    Guruji.com
    Hackers
    How To Queries
    Huffington Post
    Human Flesh Search Engines
    IBM
    I'm Feeling Lucky
    Incentives
    Internet
    IP Addresses
    Japanese Auction
    Jeff Bezos
    Jeffrey Brewer
    Jill Abramson
    Kellogg’s
    Keyword Research
    Kindle
    Larry
    Larry Page
    Lidar
    LinkedIn
    Links
    Lori Randall Stradtman
    Luck
    Mail
    Malware
    Mark Davis
    Mauboussin
    Michael Mauboussin
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Stable
    Moonshot
    More Than You Know
    Neocortex
    NeXT Computer
    Nicole Perlroth
    NYT
    Nytimes.com
    Online Reputation Management
    Passwords
    Paul Buchheit
    Phishers
    Phrasal Searches
    Planet Google
    Project Loon
    PROPUBLICA
    Puzzles
    QWERTY
    QWERTY VS. DVORAK
    Recommend
    Reconsideration Tool
    Reid Hoffman
    Richard Torrenzano
    Robert Cailliau
    Robin Dunbar
    Satya Nadella
    Scams
    Schaft
    Scoop
    SEARCH ADVERTISING
    Search Engines
    Search Patterns
    Search Queries
    SEO
    Seo Agency
    SEO Analysts
    SERENDIPITY
    Sergey Brin
    Shari Fujii
    Silk Road
    Skill
    Social Networking Sites
    Spam
    Spammy
    Steve Jobs
    STORY MARKETING
    Streetview
    Stross
    Success Equation
    Suspicious Activity
    Systran
    Tell-Tale
    The 20% Doctrine
    The Age Of The Unthinkable
    The Art Of Strategy
    The Atlantic
    THE BANDWAGON EFFECT
    THE DUTCH AUCTION
    The Guardian
    The Legend Of Zelda
    The New York Times
    Think Twice
    Tim Berners-Lee
    Trivia
    Union Public Service Commission
    Uper Mario Bros
    URL
    Venture Capitalist
    Vigilantes
    Webmaster
    Webmaster Tools
    Website Traffic
    Wii
    William Vickery
    Wired Article
    World Wide Web
    WYSIWYG
    Yahoo

    RSS Feed

    View my profile on LinkedIn

About Us
Contact Us
Consult Us Now
Write to Us 
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2022 Proseperity
Photos used under Creative Commons from futureshape, a4gpa, taymtaym, Esparta