Human Brain Places Limit On Twitter Friends 176
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).'"
Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Without modifying ourselves it's improbable that any technology can change the limits our biological make-up presents.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Such a person might not be antisocial per-se they just might have hit a stack overflow.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I mean after all that's only 110 people left...
Re: (Score:2)
110 is not a large number when it comes to social interaction. Losing 40 slots seems pretty limiting.
Re: (Score:2)
So subtract 50 for work, 30 for family and 20 for postman/butcher etc.
Let me point you that, in average, the real-world interaction of "a World of warcraft player with an active player group of say 40 people" is mediated by his mum and this happens sporadically during the day - specifically only when she comes to drop, in the basement. the pizza and the energy drinks ordered over the Internet.
So, don't worry about work, family, postman, butcher - they are already non-existing for the subject.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I don't use Twitter, but I do use Facebook for real social interaction. In fact a lot of real world events I've gone to lately (meeting friends, parties, dancing events, even some business stuff) have been initialized through Facebook. As annoying as it is "social technology" has it's merits when applied properly and used like the tool it is.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Mabye if you live in a large city, and you use walmart or whatever as your butchery. But why not make friends with your butcher and postman? Even if 1% of their clientel forms good friendships with them, it's good that *someone* does. It's always good to have at least some 'regulars', and likewise, it's good to be a 'regular' to at least someone. Someone needs to make sure that your butcher isn't suicidal, might as well be you. There are enough people around us that we can all pick about 10-20 or so,
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Or, if they count against that number, they aren't on the fringe of his life.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
I would be inclined to agree with you had I not actually made friends through Twitter by mutually following certain interests with others, not to mention other ways online.
It's no different than making a friend through something like IRC. I've made and kept friends for decades through IRC and now I've done the same through Twitter, although not in decades obviously. And in both cases, we've gone on to meet and continue to meet up in real life.
Re: (Score:2)
But not all "slots" have the same size. From those 40 WoW players, you'll probably have a strong connection with a small number of them, and the rest will just be acquaintances.
It's the same as in any group; we're usually not really friends with all our colleagues in high school, despite knowing them all.
Re: (Score:2)
That's kind of what this is talking about though. In the case of a 40+ person MMO guild, how many of the people do you actually regularly talk to outside of a group setting? They are talking about the number of people you can have regular meaningful contact with. At their peaks, I was a leader in a WoW guild with about 80 people and a leader in a Planetside Alliance with about 200, but I didn't actually have regular meaningful 1 on 1 discussions with more than 5 or 10 of them tops, in either situation.
Not true. (Score:2, Insightful)
In one IRC chatroom alone there could be 150+ regular chatters. Across a dozen of these there could be well over 1000.
It's not difficult to be in contact with hundreds of different people every day for months.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also a handy indicator of the efficiency of a group. A group of people smaller than Dunbar's nu
Re: (Score:2)
The point is maintaining social contact. 'Knowing about' or 'remembering names' isn't the same as 'regularly speaking to and keeping up-to-date with'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, the response of a typical Slashdot dweller, I suppose.
It is not a matter of memorizing screen names or trivial facts about others--the human mind is substantially adept at that. The point is establishing personal relationships with those people, emotional and psychological bonds, and interacting with them socially in a significant way.
Posting a message to a chat-room with hundreds of people is not the same as interacting with each one personally, individually; even if you managed to remember all their
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yeah. But this isn't trying to measure contacts, it's just using that as a metric. It's trying to measure "connectedness". The Harold Camping follower in the sandwich board at my rail station probably "interacts" with a hell of a lot of people. I wouldn't say he has a connection with them though.
The MonkeySphere (Score:2)
It's not difficult to be in contact with hundreds of different people every day for months.
There's a huge difference between people inside your MonkeySphere [cracked.com] and people inside your chat room.
Re: (Score:3)
If you talk to them on a daily basis, what do you consider that?
Re: (Score:2)
Do you talk to each and everyone? Or to "the group" and who happens to be online? Do you actually maintain individual conversations with each person every day, or at least very regularly?
Re: (Score:2)
I talk to the girl at subway a few days a week. I don't even know her name (no name-tag). I have little personal investment in her. I mean, sure, I hope she's doing well, but not any more than any other near stranger.
On IRC and other internet forums, there are a couple people I talk to regularly; mostly just...whatever. I don't touch base with each twitter follower every day. That would be...burdensome. Even if I only have 300 something. Who are mostly spam-bots.
I ask the leader or most popular in the group how the rest of the group is doing. I ask the one who follows all the gossip and politics whats going on. I don't get involved and I don't talk to each one on a daily basis because I would not need to do that to get a status update.
Meaningful? (Score:2)
How is meaningful defined? If you mean regular social contact with then it's easy to talk to 1000 people in a day.
If you are talking about talking to 1000 people in different chatrooms on a regular basis thats also easy but it would probably be on a weekly basis.
How do we determine what a meaningful conversation is? Is this conversation you and I are having meaningful? How would I judge?
Re: (Score:2)
So you mean family? or are you talking about something else?
150? (Score:2)
That's like 50 times more than I could ever handle.
How is strength of link measured? (Score:2)
By importance? Importance is very difficult to quantify for any study because it's completely subjective.
Re: (Score:2)
Importance is very difficult to quantify for any study because it's completely subjective.
Would you waste much time with a person if it wouldn't be important to you? (simply the number of message twittered on a topic may reveals something about the importance).
Re: (Score:2)
Yes of course. These conversations aren't usually important to me. I'm sure I spend maybe 20 minutes a day on this sites or sites like this.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, if you converse long enough with a person, chances are high that the person also starts to become important for you.
TFS:
created by three million Twitter users over four years
I have a suspicion that the study methodology statistically took care of this, including the temporal stability of a relationship factor. I mean, what's your estimation on the probability to have a large numbers of cases like the one you described?
Re: (Score:2)
For example, you might converse with a main developer of a software project not because you care about the person, but because you care about the software. If someone else would develop the software, you'd instead converse with that other person.
Of course, if you converse long enough with a person, chances are high that the person also starts to become important for you.
So the person has to be personally important? That would probably be far less than 150 people for most. Probably far less than 50 people.
Reminds me of very old cracked.com article (Score:5, Informative)
the monkeysphere! :)
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html [cracked.com]
I guess, with twitter and fb, the monkeysphere is expanding, and you cannot cope with it unless the brain is modified
Re: (Score:2)
Ancient history wouldn't really answer the question, since in ancient times, there was no significant opportunity to make more than 100-200 regular connections for a single person, and usually a lot less. For example, most
you are missing the point... (Score:2)
When we say 150 connection is the limit, it means 150 connections matter.
you may have 500 facebook friends, and they all may get your status updates, and many of them may reply to you too,
But if one of them dies, or goes away from your friends list, you will not be aware unless that person is in your "monkeysphere".
Even if you are an agony aunt, and reply to 100 different people in a week, you forget about them immediately. How many will you remember actually?
Re: (Score:2)
AFAICS none of the arguments you put forward are *biological*. To test the *biological* capacity of the brain for keeping connections between people would require a training program that specifically targets improving that ability - kind of like we have sportspeople who train all their life to beat the olympics. What I also me
Re: (Score:2)
Of course (Score:2)
Cracked.com is not a research website, but a website which puts forward stuff in a witty way. How did you come to the conclusion that I thought that cracked was the researcher?
Someone got nervous (Score:2)
"This fifinding suggests that even though modern social networks help us to log all the people with whom we meet and interact, they are unable to overcome the biological and physical constraints that limit stable social relations," say Goncalves and co.
Not all social interactions are Tweets. (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose further research will explore how the real-world-and-non-Twitter social life of the twitterati changes as they near their Dunbar limit on Twitter. Perhaps, as the article boldly suggests, "social networks [do] not change human social capabilities" (Conclusions, 7) and the Dunbar limit is indeed resistant to technological circumvention. But this article doesn't make that clear. By not examining the full social space of its subjects, the study does not actually address the possibility that Twitter has increased the number of regular contacts - of all types - that an individual can maintain.
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming the Dunbar limit is real, and not just hand-waving of the sort that appeals to Malcolm Gladwell, it applies to the exponential space needed to store the square of the relationships maintained, not the time spent maintaining the relationships themselves.
In other words, it's not that its hard to remember stuff about 150 people - I interact with thousands of people at my lectures every year and remember their personalities if not their names - but rather trying to remember what Person A thinks about P
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming the Dunbar limit is real, and not just hand-waving of the sort that appeals to Malcolm Gladwell, it applies to the exponential space needed to store the square of the relationships maintained, not the time spent maintaining the relationships themselves.
In other words, it's not that its hard to remember stuff about 150 people - I interact with thousands of people at my lectures every year and remember their personalities if not their names - but rather trying to remember what Person A thinks about Person B and so forth. This is much more difficult.
Because of that, I'm skeptical of this researcher's findings having anything to do with it. If I have 100 friends or 500, it is just as easy for me to do my updates. Reading them all also isn't terribly difficult, but there's a lot of people that post nothing interesting, and fewer worth replying to.
Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Unless it influences or has to do with how you think about them or they think about you, why would you remember it?
It does influence how they think about you (Score:2)
but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Unless it influences or has to do with how you think about them or they think about you, why would you remember it?
Because it does influence how they think about you. If Gnivad thinks Tilda is stuck-up, then siding with Tilda on an issue may make you look stuck-up to Gnivad.
Re: (Score:2)
>>Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Because even though you know both A and B, and are friends with them, they hate each other (A cheated on B back in the day), and so you know not to invite them both to the same dinner.
Or more importantly, those annoying group politics that every group of humans over the size of 10 inevitably develops.
Re: (Score:2)
>>Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Because even though you know both A and B, and are friends with them, they hate each other (A cheated on B back in the day), and so you know not to invite them both to the same dinner.
Or more importantly, those annoying group politics that every group of humans over the size of 10 inevitably develops.
You don't have to choose sides in group conflicts.
Re: (Score:2)
Getting lunch with A automatically puts you on the shit list with B.
*That's* why it's so important.
In a broader sense, you can see people tracking all of this stuff across the board, like with the endless spirals of celebrity romances and breakups.
bu..sh.t (Score:2)
Re:bu..sh.t (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
Humans adapt their surroundings a lot faster than they'll adapt their own brains.
Ha! You just failed the Turing test.
Re: (Score:2)
You are missing the point. There is nothing magical about 75 mph. After all, speed is relative to the observer. It is a matter of the limited time in which our brains can react to unexpected events, under duress, in order to maintain control of a complex machine.
This limit may have been 75 mph back in the days of dirt roads and manual transmissions. However, the limit may be higher nowadays when cars are easier to handle and roads are much clearer and homogenous. More importantly, the factors that lead
Re: (Score:2)
Please don't compare professional racing drivers to people driving around on the roads. Racing drivers (for the most part*) drive on closed circuits where there are only a limited number of things that can happen on the road up ahead of them. Driving around on public roads exposes you to a far greater number of potential variances, people are going in all different directions, there are farmers moving there equipment, there are pedestrians, bicycles, livestock, all sorts of things can happen. Racing drivers
So.... 640 Friends ought to be enough (Score:2)
Retail studies from years ago (Score:3)
However, having looked at the group dynamics of many organizations over my life time that is the range that fits with my experience. Organizations that are designed to be social interactions for their members tend to divide between 200 and 500, either intentionally or because of internal disputes.
Cool! (Score:2)
Concurrency problem, not capacity (Score:2)
The problem is not keeping up with people online, it's that you never really find the time to spend with them. I particularly noticed it when I started studying, I had my "old friends" and my "study friends" which were completely disjoint social circles. Friday and saturday night there was different things going on, I could either be here or there. Take a thing as a birthday party, most people have it on saturday and there's only 52-53 of them each year, with 200 friends there's likely to be 4 a week. Or ca
How about limiting to 50? (Score:2)
It seems to me like it would make more sense to just have facebook or twitter give you the option to limit yourself to a number of your choosing. Then there would be no need for a whole other site with that limit that you now have to convinc
Hmm.. (Score:2)
measuring the number of people an individual can maintain regular contact with, and came up with 150
My number is more like 2-3. Maybe that's why I'm so anti-social.
That's why things were better... (Score:2)
See? This is why the first generation of pokemon was the best!
Obligatory 80s Reference: (Score:2)
This is your brain on Twitter.
Any questions?
Obligatory QDB (Score:2)
Correlation (Score:2)
Read TFA, and it's like watching Fox News.
Correlation doesn't prove anything.
How does the size of military units (specific ones no less, it's not like all military units are the same size) have to do with maintaining stable social circles?
How does real-world social interaction (actual social capital) compare with people you don't know and never met following you on twitter?
You can always find numbers in the world which correlate. The number of galaxies in the universe is about the same as neurons in our bra
Re: (Score:2)
Most humans own an average of 4 cars in a lifetime.
Hey, a good idea for a poll to indicate the age of active /.-ers.
Other than that, by this logic and in average, I must be already in my mid-life. Phew, I was under the impression I'm too old already - still enough time for a mid-life crisis.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
thats plain wrong (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, also, there was the fact that new cars were affordable back then compared to median income. In 1960 the price of a new car was half the median income. In 2011, the price a new car is almost equal to the median income.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If all humans lived like your rather narrow social circle then maybe that would be relevant.
Re: (Score:3)
Averages are tricky. There are a lot of people on this earth who will never own a car. Most of them, in fact. Four does seem very low for the regular car buying American in my opinion.
Re: (Score:3)
For a typical American, I'd agree. As someone living in Europe, I'd say 4 is about right over a lifetime. My wife, who was born and grew up in a major European city (~500k people) did not even get her driver's license until she was 40. She had no need for a car or for driving one, we have something called public transportation. I realize this is a hard concept for Americans to understand (sarcasm aside, I am an American... just living abroad for many years). I actually *gasp* lived abroad without a car for
Re: (Score:2)
This seems kind of like making the tired point that 'people in Europe travel WAY more than Americans and Americans are durr durr durr durr", which really tends to forget the point that there are plenty of european countries crammed into the size of an American state, while I can drive for six days in a line and still be in the same country and have to cross an ocean to reach anything but North and South America. Likewise, if I lived down the street from where I work, I wouldn't care about a car, either. How
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cars make more sense in low density environments and less sense in high density ones.
I'll let you use your big brain, Brad, and figure out which better matches America vs. Europe.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
France is the size of Texas, but has *three times* as many people.
Even still, in regions like the Perignord that I visited two years ago, it is tough to get around without a car.
Re: (Score:2)
Which american state? Alaska? Because for anything less than 1,000 miles it is less expensive and time consuming to drive than to take the airplane. For my family, a plane ride would be about $2,000 to pretty much anywhere. That's the cost of an entire vacation including driving costs. Airplane travel is beyond the means of the middle class american.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
14 hours of my time would cost substantially more than $150. You factored that in when you "came out ahead" right?
Re: (Score:2)
I have only a metaphorical method. I would pay $75 to avoid sitting in a truck for fourteen hours. The total pot of money does not change, I agree; but the total pot of disposable time does. Or did you buy pig iron and build the rest of that truck yourself?
Re: (Score:2)
I live in the UK, got my full license at 19. I'm now 27 and I've owned.. 4 cars, one motorbike, and one company car. I actually took my current car off the road though because I'm fed up of fuel prices, and decided to focus on saving for a while. I used to hate public transport, but it saves me about £2000 a year, and it's actually kind of relaxing not doing the driving. The only problem I've had so far was missing my stop when I read an eBook or browse the web on my phone :p In my case I can just bor
Re: (Score:2)
Your account is by far, very abnormal. BTW, by any chance, as so many do, are you confusing ownership with leasing? Many people completely confuse the two, which of course, completely changes the perception of actual ownership. If you have been leasing, which is likely, then your actual ownership is probably zero.
For ten years and six cars, that's basically a new vehicle every two years which falls on a typical lease schedule. I seriously suspect you've deluded yourself into believing you've owned six cars
Re: (Score:2)
Cars can be really cheap, and some people just sell them on because they're bored and want something new. One of the guys here at work probably gets a new car once a year at least, because he's always modding the hell out of them and either they break and he gets fed up, or he crashes them. One woman here at work gets a new car something like every 3 months because her husband likes to buy them cheap down south and sell them for a profit up here.
I've been given two old cars (one by parents, one by uncle), a
Re: (Score:2)
Regarding leasing, I have nev
Re: (Score:2)
Again, I believe he's confused. Most people will only ever own two homes in their lifetime. You will live in many more. Chances are, even if he wasn't leasing, he simply traded in on a vehicle he was making payments on. I doubt he "owned" them outright.
Perhaps this is splitting hairs on the definition of owning. Meaning, owning outright verses making payments. Technically, you don't own until you hold that title.
Re: (Score:2)
My grandpa is at best low end middle class (and that's a stretch even), yet he owns 3 vehicles and has owned many more. He gets really old used vehicles, makes some repairs, and does all sorts of trading around with them. Perhaps the GPs parents did the same sort of thing. Still outside the norm, but no need to be rich.
Re: (Score:2)
He's most likely making the number up or not using Americans for his population.
In America, the average time between cars is ~five years, according to insurance company and EPA estimates.
So I think the GP is trying to say we live only 20 years after we start driving.
Re: (Score:2)
He used "most" and "average" together, which just sounds wrong and is ambiguous. Does it mean own simultaneously, i.e for half their life they have none and for the rest they have eight? You could certainly interpret it that way.
Take his phrase and s/4/2/ and s/cars/legs/
Re:Lifetime (Score:2)
It's like xkcd's comments on graphs without an axis or labels.
Lifetime... that's a lot of years! Let's say you "die young" at 50. You got your first car "late" at 20. So AC's figure of 4 cars = 7.x years per car, *each*. That's kinda long. Many people don't buy new anymore. So now we're asking about the quality of the used ones we get.
Americans are quite happy with the cultural tradition of the clunker to get you past a year. You pick it up for $500 and it somehow passes inspection.
The other part is the wor
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
150 twitter 'friends' is equivalent to 150 trillion Facebook friends, because Facebook friends have no value.
Re: (Score:3)
I was under the impression that twitter friends had the same (lack of) value than Facebook's ...
Re:150 friends cap for Twitter, OK. But... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3)
I think it's just us, increasingly. Is a Twitter message directed at someone really less personal than an SMS? I see no reason why it should.
Apparently, my trolls lack any sense... (Score:2)
Including sense of humor.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody can. There's only so many hours in a day. Even if you spend 14 hours a day -only- being social (=100% of your waking time minus the time you eat and visit the bathroom etc), then 150 friends would still only get 10 minutes a day each.
And most people do other things than just be social, you know, stuff like holding a job or studying, shopping, cooking, doing housework, showering, etc.
A more realistic (but still high!) time-available estimate is 3-4 hours on weekdays and 10 hours on weekends, which giv
Re: (Score:2)
So many hours in the day, but I don't need to talk to each of my friends every day, so my time spent with friends doesn't need to fit into 10-minute increments.
I can spend a couple of hours with each of 150 friends every couple of weeks, on average, and still fit into your 14-hour s
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe when all the difficult projects are done I can reserve time for regular use of twitter/blog/etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Some even claim notes and dictations are replacing writing, since the idea is the same.
That doesn't make much sense either, does it? RSS has NOTHING to do with a website or it's contents, it's just a format/interface for retrieving it. In fact, you could USE rss to interface to facebook messages!