What Do All These "Friends" Add Up To Anyway?
by Kari Dunn Saratovsky on Mon, 03/02/2009 - 12:03
An interview with Facebook’s “in-house sociologist” Cameron Marlow, appeared in last week’s issue of The Economist and has since created an interesting debate about the value and depth of our online social networks. Marlow looked at the size of one’s network on Facebook (in terms of number of friends) and then analyzed the rate of communication and interaction between those friends - based on comments, status updates, wall messages, etc.
Now, before sharing some of those numbers – here’s a quick lesson to help set some context. According to anthropologists, there is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships (this is also called Dunbar’s Number). Beyond this number, which is estimated to be around 150, the stability of the relationships begins to break down and connections are not as meaningful.
Think about your own network on Facebook or the people who follow you on Twitter. Most probably fit into one of these three categories:
- Actual legitimate friends: You may have known them since the playground or at college, these are the people who use social networks for staying up to date on what's happening in the lives of their closest connections, aka: "real" friends. Whether it's as mundane as what they're having for dinner, or as exciting as capturing their newborn's first steps - you take note and share in the moment.
- Information Seekers/Gatherers: These are the people who expand beyond those with whom you have pre-existing relationships. The lines may be a little blurrier, but there is an interest in networking, and sharing information with one another, most likely for professional reasons.
- Tried and True Networkers: These are people with thousands of connections in the online world, and likely equally large rolodexes. They believe connections are fundamental to their professional careers, and they make no effort in hiding it.
You can see how Marlow, breaks down the stats on Facebook users’ social behavior patterns here. But in short, an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.
These numbers got me thinking about the increasing number of nonprofit organizations who are using social networks to fundraise and interact with their members. Obviously they are doing so with varying degrees of success. I wonder what the implications are for meaningful engagement between organizations and individuals -- and whether a version of the Dunbar theory might be applicable for that kind of organizational interaction.
As noted in the Economist article, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Or to quote the article, “Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”
As we see more organizations taking their fundraising and mobilization activities online, how can the right level of interaction be maintained so that the level of social networking outweighs the "broadcast" message? And, how can organizations get and maintain individuals into their "Dunbar circles?"
What do you think about the Dunbar Number’s relevance to organizational use of social networks? Is your organization taking different steps to engage online in a more meaningful with your donors, volunteers and constituents? How can organizations move beyond the 5-10% that seems to be the human threshold for meaningful interaction?
Comments
This was a great article -- thanks for sharing it with SC readers!
ReadWrite web added some interesting speculation of how Twitter might be different than FaceBook in this regard. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_many_facebook_friends.php
Kari, I've been contemplating the same thing ever since reading Beth Kanter's post analyzing with whom she really twitters with the most. I hadn't read about Dunbar's number and appreciate the scientific background to the current social media limitations. I wonder, however, if nonprofits can overcome Dunbar's limit by thinking about it differently: 1. nonprofits need to be in the circle of many, many people to create a devout online following. Thus, if 250 people love your nonprofit enough that it's in the inner circle, then that's enough for your ngo. 2. Many more than the 5-10% limit you speak of are willing to take discreet, non-routine actions on behalf of your organization. They listen to the ngo's tweets or fan the group on Facebook, but aren't regular communicators. That's ok. They just have to pass on the word of the event, petition, cause, etc. 3. The goal is to move people from the broadcast to the engaged levels, so the organization should work on interacting more with broadcasters and bringing them into engaged members. (This motivates them to become the people I wrote about in the first point.)
Those are my brief thoughts on your post. It is certainly a thoughtful and inspiring blog piece that I really appreciate.
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