Destroying Dunbar

It seems that these days, as the SNS stew continues to simmer, more and more of the top executives are being brought in front of a growing number of attentive audiences. During these panels and interactions, most are probed and prodded to provide information and insight into not only their business models but the phenomena as a whole. These often candid discussions have provided many with a great deal as perceptions of the value and scope of these systems is revealed.

Lately, the majority of the controversy seems to stem as each SNS tries to explain its founding role in the system while applying a mixture of data, pseudo-statistics, and personal opinion to describe how social networks work. Many, including myself, are wondering if the application of these metrics are valid measures of motives and indicators of human relationships. is the growth of these sites a valid source of research? In many ways, the answers to these questions can only be understood after understand the body of research that predates the buzz. One very important number is 150, informally known as Dunbar's Number.

I think it must have been back in one of my old sociology courses that I first came across the Dunbar Number. Many years later, I encountered this number again in Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". Most recently, the number has worked into conversation (both blog and real-world) in some interesting new ways.

Last week, Christopher Allen posted an excellent analysis about Dunbar's Number and how it applies to the formation and function of groups. The definition he provides states:

... there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships, that this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.

Christopher points out, however, that Dunbar's Number is reflective of an upper threshold more so than as a viable average for the size of one's personal network. As the group approaches this size, other forces, namely efficiency and dispersion, begin to degrade the system as a whole.

This all leads me to hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups -- as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups, such as villages -- hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. Anything more than this and the group has to spend too much time "grooming" to keep group cohesion, rather then focusing on why the people want to spend the effort on that group in the first place -- say to deliver a software product, learn a technology, promote a meme, or have fun playing a game. Anything less than this and you risk losing critical mass because you don't have requisite variety.

Source: Life With Alacrity, "The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes"

Most interesting are some of the observations Christopher makes regarding the other critical "grouping" numbers:

In my experience the smallest viable group size seems to be somewhere in the range of 5 to 9.

Looking smaller, we see that a group of 2 can be tremendously creative (ask any parent), but often has insufficient resources and thus requires deep commitment by both parties. Notably, often the difficulty of a 2-person business partnership is compared to that of a marriage. A group of 3 is often unstable, with one person feeling left out, or else one person controlling the others by being the "split" vote. A group of 4 often devolves into two pairs.

In my opinion it is at 5 that the feeling of "team" really starts. At 5 to 8 people, you can have a meeting where everyone can speak out about what the entire group is doing, and everyone feels highly empowered.

Source: Life With Alacrity, "The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes"

I had meant to mention this post about a week ago when it was first made, however the schedule has been quite filled. On Wednesday, I attended an iBreakfast event focused on Social Networking. Executives from Ryze, Visible Path, Zero Degrees, and IStandFor.com were all present on a panel discussion. I was immediately struck by a statement made by Adrian Scott of Ryze. HIs statement referenced Dunbar's Number as a thing of the past. I was amazed that Scott's assertion was that as a result of SNS, individuals could now assemble and interact with networks far greater in size, even as large as 3000 people.

Immediately, flags went off in my head. I was not sure what his definition of interaction was, but it seemed to indicate some form of intimacy existed between these people. I'm not sure exactly what bothered me more actually. On the one hand, there's the assertion that, without research, Dunbar's Number could be adjusted upwards simply because SNS technology provides access to those people. On the other hand, the notion that interaction can be meaningful when managing a group as large as he indicates is particularly troubling. As a member of Ryze, I have met a number of different people at the events. I've even managed to make a couple of friends and to even get some business from some new contacts. Would I characterize the majority of those "interactions" as meaningful? Is that even remotely comparable to the strength of the ties that Dunbar refers to? I can't imagine that.

It seems that I'm also not the only one taking issue with the figureheads of the SNS providers. The other day, danah boyd cringes at the comments made by Johnathan Abrams, CEO of Friendster, during SXSW . As she notes:

I really wanted to like Jonathan Abrams' talk at SXSW. I was trying to put down my frustrations and listen. But he broke me. Not with the anecdotes, but the horrible misunderstanding of social networks.

He started off the talk saying that he wanted to clarify what people meant by social networks. Midway through, he spoke about how his friend from Ryze was creating a tool for professional networking. He thought that this was great but that it would be cool to make this available for social life too. Thus, he made up the term social networking to discuss what he was doing. And he finds it really strange that everyone else is using that term to talk about their sites and even ::gasp:: offline behavior.

He disregards all predecessors (other than Ryze) because they didn't influence him. He disregards academics, points out that his site is the only one who made it a reality, etc. Erg. I can't even reiterate all of the things that i disagreed with.

Source: danah boyd, "::cringe:: Jonathan Abrams Did Not Invent Social Networks" via Get Real, "danah boyd Cringes"

The jury is still out on what was actually said as some confirm and others excuse the comments made by Abrams. If anything is clear, it's that there's a lot left to discuss in this space and the concepts that drive it are not simple nor should they be trivialized by casual evaluation of web trends logs and other indirect, unresolved