Interesting news today as a Oxford university researcher who’s pointed out that the human brain is only capable of dealing with 150 social relationships.
Robin Dunbar, the researcher involved, is the namesake of “Dunbar’s number” – suggesting our neocortex is only capable of managing a maximum of 150 social connections.
According to several news reports, he’s currently studying social networking sites such as facebook, and preliminary results suggest that they show exactly the same pattern.
So what about people who follow thousands of people on twitter? Well his work seems to suggest that those people simply can’t be listening to the majority of them – although there may be up to 150 people (including contacts not on twitter) who they have a real social connection with.
However, many people on twitter do not have much to say. Following people does not assume a friendship, often it is purely a case of ‘you scratch my back, i’ll scratch yours’. By following people, you are more likely to be followed. This can give you more twitter reach/credentials/power, meaning you can form relationships with those who you may be trying to reach.
It will be interesting to see what his work says of the new relationships that occur online – I guess after the 150 close connections there are more abstract relationships where you only listen to certain things groups of people say, or you only want to talk TO them… for example, on facebook I’ll look at everything my good friends say, but with (some of) my footy team i’ll only be interested in their footy chat.
Facebook does already account for this… You can choose to see certain people’s comment less in your stream without disconnecting from them totally. So technically you are still linked without losing ‘friends’.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rubber Republic, project manager. project manager said: OMG RT @Rubber_Republic: Quick! *unfollow, unfollow* human brain is only capable of dealng w/ 150 social relationships http://bit.ly/6t3Gvn [...]
I disagree, Ally. The only way twitter is useful is if you only follow people you want to hear from. In the early days people did that, it grew out of the vote ‘with your feet’ idea of unconferences. Now, with more people migrating from other social networks like myspace, with its “Thanks for the add!” culture, and facebook, with the “reconnect with school friends” nonsense, you get different usage patterns.
I follow 211 people, and regularly switch people I’m not enjoying out for new follows. If you are deliberately making your snr worse to encourage others to follow you you’ve completely missed the point. Use lists if you just want to occasionally look in on a subset of some people’s tweets.