Social Network Size : How many can You Handle?

When i walk through the lanes of my hometown , i know everyone around knows me there. The people at smaller places are much more familiar and friendlier with each other than those living in big cities(Who has time?). Why so? Is it the time factor only?

In the earlier post on What is Your Online Social Limit? , a question was raised on the Bounded Rationality while we maintain our Social Relationships. Has our Social Network changed with the emergence of New Media? Has the technology expanded it?

Our 'actual' and 'real' friends still are very few limited by our own human nature and capabilities rather than technology. Social media is allowing us to 'maintain' our friends (who otherwise would move on slowly) in the rapidly changing world. As the old saying goes 'Out of Sight means Out of Mind', these sites ensure that friends are never out of sight and hence mind. They help us integrate our networks and rebuild (virtually) our old and many new communities. But where to stop? As we have seen in the drawbacks of Network Effects , after one point any new addition leads to congestion and slowly the value of the product/network/connections starts diminishing.

One School of thought says irrespective of the limits provided by these sites , most of human beings can maintain , nurture and sustain around 150 meaningful relationships at a time , online or offline it doesn't matter. This 150 is what we call as Dunbar's Number. It is considered the basic building block for human organizations (from many traditional corporates to Roman Army - are organized around this one Dunbar Number). Groups less than 150 members can function without any formal hierarchy and structure and hence minimal level of bureaucracy. Everyone knows everyone else and how they are related to each other in such groups.But with increase in level of social complexity in our relationships, this number seems to be getting reduced to a lower level. The average number of friends a Facebook account is currently 120 and (try/check yourself) the number of such friends whom we frequently interact is quite small and STABLE.

Here is this Social Networking Site which is trying to leverage on this phenomenon and restrict the number of friends we can have to 50.

They position themselves as 'The Personal Network' allowing anyone to share the moment (Photo Sharing) with his/her close friends (maximum 50). Hence , while you form your high quality network and share with only those who matter the most , the upper limit ensure that your network is not cluttered with just anyone and everyone.

Beyond 150?

Do we really socialize in big networks? Do we really so called 'network' at all then? We are merely broadcasting (advertising?) our lives to a layer built of acquaintances. Our real intimate friends are still the same - consistent and stable. One way to make meaningful networks is to divide your online friend-list into smaller units (functional , regional , etc) - That is the whole purpose of Tags and Labels for our contacts which we ignore most of the time. Such filters aligns the network's relevance towards the particular need at hand.

So is Big the new Small?

I have been living away from my home since more than 10 years now. From high school to undergrad to work to post graduation , one thing i have noticed that most of the time it is not advisable to have your best friend around as your roomie or as your flat mate or as your working group partner. The magic just wanes away slowly. The strong ties are an expensive bet.

Social Networking sites has given us the ability to build big networks comprising of weak ties which requires less time , dedication , inhibitions and commitment from both end and most of the time very valuable (getting new job or new projects or new client or a recommendation , idea or advise) in harnessing the true value of our network. And the bigger your social network is , the more are the chances that you wont be 'out of sight' of many of your connections. There will always be stream of updates , status changes of yours reaching out to your connections and vice versa and All Live. This is where Allen curve comes - which says that there is an exponential drop in the frequency of communication as the distance between engineers increases which implies the more closer we are , there are more chances that we will communicate. Online Social Networks bridge the gap and the distance and increases our chances of having a future communication with our connections.