2 Reasons Why You Need to Care About Dunbar's Number
Posted by dan ronken
It's been a couple of weeks since my discussion with A.M. McReynolds and Rick Burnes on the human ability to maintain close and meaningful relationships. Of course we can, but the question is how many of these can we maintain at any given time?
In the ever-evolving social mediasphere, my head spins when I start to think, "How in the world do my fellow humans keep up with the thousands upon thousands of friends they've acquired through the use of social media?"
Robin Dunbar, The British anthropologist from Oxford University, concluded that the number of people in our social network we are able to maintain close ties with, at any given time, is limited to roughly 150. These conclusions are based on the studies of primates and their relative brain size.
Now, I've never been accused of being a reductionist (explaining complex phenomenon by reducing it to just the smaller physical items we can study), however, this viewpoint seemed to match with my personal experience. So, is it a wise move for me to just accept this conclusion and move along?
In doing some research for this post, I ran across Chris Brogan's article on beating Dunbar's number and I was compelled to read it. Of the few exchanges I've had with this guy (who is arguably one of the top authorities in social media), I've been simply amazed at his prompt response time and thoughtful answers to questions or comments I have posed to him.
I opened my first twitter account (using a nickname) roughly six months ago and it was fairly simple to gain over a thousand followers (without special software). I recently decided to open a new twitter account using my real name (wise move) and am now approaching 200 genuine followers and I'm in no rush to be a number chaser. They are growing organically as I continue to publish valuable content.
Of course I want a large network, but I'd rather have 'cheerleaders' on my side spreading my work than trying to do it all by myself. I use tools such as twitter grader to determine if this person is engaged in the twittersphere or just 'chasing numbers.' Here are two things I'm attempting to do:
1) Paying close attention to people that are already in my network and not worrying so much about the exponential growth of my cyber friends and followers. If I keep publishing unique and valuable content, and sharing it with this network, quality organic growth will happen.
2) Less worrying about myself and more focused on others. Not only is this less stressful, but it makes me feel more connected which is something I value greatly.
These are just two ideas. What can you add to this list? I'd love to hear what you think.
Photo Credit: martin.canchola