Human Brain Places Limit On Twitter Friends

Hugh Pickens writes "Back in early '90s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar began studying human social groups, measuring the number of people an individual can maintain regular contact with, and came up with 150 — a number that appears to be constant throughout human history — from the size of neolithic villages to military units to 20th century contact books. But in the last decade, social networking technology has had a profound influence on the way people connect, vastly increasing the ease with which we can communicate with and follow others, so it's not uncommon for tweeters to follow and be followed by thousands of others. Now Bruno Goncalves has studied the network of links created by three million Twitter users over four years. After counting tweets that are mutual and regular as signifying a significant social bond, he found that when people start tweeting, their number of friends increases to a saturation point until they become overwhelmed. Beyond that saturation point, the conversations with less important contacts start to become less frequent and the tweeters begin to concentrate on the people they have the strongest links with. So what is the saturation point? The answer is between 100 and 200, just as Dunbar predicts. 'This finding suggests that even though modern social networks help us to log all the people with whom we meet and interact,' says Goncalves, 'they are unable to overcome the biological and physical constraints that limit stable social relations (PDF).'"

Comments

Makes sense

[Max Romantschuk]

Without modifying ourselves it's improbable that any technology can change the limits our biological make-up presents.

Re:Makes sense

[bane2571]

What's interesting is how this affects other interactions. For a modern example, imagine a World of warcraft player with an active player group of say 40 people. If the brain has a hardwired limit of 150, then that dos not leave much room for "real" social interaction.

Such a person might not be antisocial per-se they just might have hit a stack overflow.

Re:Makes sense

[Seumas]

You count your postman and butcher and 50 people at work that significantly? If they count against that number, then it seems you're probably investing FAR too much in these people who are essentially on the fringe of your life.

As for Twitter... nobody on there should count toward anything. Twiter is about whoring yourself out just like all the other social networks. It's about spreading yourself around to boost your ego (or your business). It's not about listening or having a bi-directional friendship.

Reminds me of very old cracked.com article

[tanveer1979]

the monkeysphere!
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
I guess, with twitter and fb, the monkeysphere is expanding, and you cannot cope with it unless the brain is modified :)

Re:bu..sh.t

[captainpanic]

Well... Human brains indeed cannot deal with speeds over 75 mph on ancient roads... we've had to build huge nearly straight roads where you have an excellent view and where you can anticipate things half a mile ahead. If we would be going 75 mph on roads of the quality of the 1800's, we'd all be dead within a year.

Humans adapt their surroundings a lot faster than they'll adapt their own brains.

Re:150 friends cap for Twitter, OK. But...

[wesleyjconnor]

150 twitter 'friends' is equivalent to 150 trillion Facebook friends, because Facebook friends have no value.

150 twitter friends is equal to one friends phone number.
maybe its just me, but if im not texting-calling you then really we aren't friends, we are acquaintances