Dunbar’s number: Social capital v. social signal in Twitter
NOTE: The following post was originally published in my Twitter blog “Beyond 140.” Find more of my Twitter-specific posts there.
“Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.” – Dunbar’s Number, via wikipedia
I’ve been reading some interesting things lately (here and here) about Dunbar’s number as it applies to social networking sites. Essentially, the number breaks down like this for social networking profiles (via Read Write Web):
“According to Cameron Marlow, Facebook’s “in-house sociologist,” that number is four if you are male and six if you are female. As the Economist reports this morning, Marlow’s research indicates that the average Facebook user has a network of about 120 friends, but only has two-way conversations with a very small subset of these ‘friends.’ Interestingly, even for those users who have a far larger number of friends (500+), those numbers barely grow (ten for men and sixteen for women).”
While Marlow’s assessment relates directly to FB, which is quite unlike Twitter, the general conclusion is interesting. Namely, that there are only so many people we can reasonably and thoughtfully engage given the fixed capacity of the human OS and available relationship RAM.
Mindless following: social capital
This leads me to ask, as others have, why we are following so very many people in services like Twitter when the reality of our attention is so limited. Author and social reseacher Mary Hodder cites the following example (in a comment from my post about protected updates):
“The other day I had a woman lash out at me on twitter for not following back everyone who follows me. She followed 6k people and I pointed out that there was no way she could read all those people all the time. I actually wanted a list of people I could reasonably follow. In other words we all have our own way of doing it, and while people may be judgmental, I was not judgmental of her for giving those she follows a false sense that she actually reads all their stuff.”
A couple of other things struck me about the import of Mary’s comment. First, the fact that anyone would admonish her for “not following back” and second, that this person would deign to tell a social theorist her job. While I don’t object to challenging authorities on their ideas, I do object to empowered ignorance (i.e., critiqueing somebody’s ideas without having any meaningful knowledge of the origins or contexts of that person’s prior knowledge or work). Which leads me to my final point.
Connecting with a person without prior social knowledge, history, context or capital is only part of the problem with the impulsivity of following on social networks.Many people, for example, quickly add anyone with a high profile for no other reason than that that person has a high profile — without engaging – on even the most superficial level – that expert’s body of ideas or context. I see thousands of people follow, for example, danah boyd – many of whom have likely not so much as read a single post in danah’s blog or research papers. Ironically, danah rarely posts much at all on Twitter, which seems a bit of the punchline to the joke of following authorities without reason (i.e., if she’s not posting about her work, why are you following?). Which is why I follow danah as a symbolic gesture of my respect for her work, which I’ve been reading and engaging since 2003.
My (Twitter) identity: Yours to discover (or invent)
That we cannot expect every new connection to take a moment and click on our website or read our about page is what I’m getting at. That some people are willing to connect without making so much as a momentary investment in context is a really questionable expression of “connection.” If you’re communicating with a person on a daily without doing so much as a rudimentary exploration of their identity (even a visit to their site) you are properly connecting with an *idea* not a person. A fictional character built on your own subjective guesswork, misreadings and convenient assumption. Our resulting relationship, in that context, is highly propblematic. Particularly when people start describing this relationship as “knowing” someone. We can certainly “get to know” someone but doing so requires actual effort on the part of both parties. Which leads me to my final thoughts.
Mindful following: social signal
While I myself continue to make connection with new people and add new people to my network based largely on the promise of a meaningful connection or shared interests, I also see the opportunities to mindfully engage these people decreasing with every new follow I add. While I certainly increase the “variety” of the tweets I’m viewing, I’m also creating more and more distance between myself and the handful of people whose tweets I might follow as more of a cohesive or narrative self expression. Instead, I get only a fleeting blip on the social radar of every person I have come into contact with on the service. As these blips increase so, too, does the noise. Imagine yourself at a giant coctail party catching only snippets of conversations – totally decontextualised from the speakers and their larger narratives. Misreadings, among other things, would arise with greater frequency due to the lack of context for what is being shared (and with whom).
I’m still wrestling with the issue of how many people I can meaningfully follow. For now, I’m discovering that of the close to 300 people I follow, only a handful post with any regularity. So the Dunbar number is also influenced – highly – by participation metrics. I can safely say that I’m not going to reach that number any time soon based on the volume of my follows who actively participate. But I will likely make a decision at the point at which I can no longer keep up and likely write about that when it occurs.
This is my speculative conclusion at this moment. I don’t see it as a permanent position I desire to prove or reinforce but a considered perspective that may change in time. And I’m fully ready and interested in developing these thoughts with the help and insight of others – also engaged in similar questions.
Your take?
No doubt, you have a lot of opinions about all of the above – including your own insights and questions. Please take a moment and share them below. I’m interested in knowin the following:
1) What do you think about Mary’s comment about following 6K people and what this says about your approach to engagement?
2) How many people do you currently follow and how would you characterise your Dunbar number?
3) How much of an effort are you willing to make when choosing to follow somebody? Do you visit their links? Read through their recent tweets, explore their friends lists? Are trust metrics a meaningful part of that choice?
Trust metrics!!! ;)
I do look at people that are following me and will only follow back if I like what they type – if it makes me smile or has promise of more than just had breakfast today.
I also remove people I’ve followed if they either tweet too much (a whole page just of their tweets means I’m missing out on others) or if they bore me.
Hey, nice article. And i’d agree with all of this, as far as traditional social networks go(like facebook), but i think that the argument doesn’t hold so well when you apply it to twitter, the relationships are far more causual and loosely bound, you are maintaining multiple relationships simultaneously.
Also the reason to follow may not be stricktly to have relationships, i work in tech and follow lots of people because it keeps me upto date with my industry giving me lots of rich sources of information and leads on trends and technologies, so i scim a lot of the content and only look at things and people i’m interest in.
The other big think about twitter is that it links circles of friends via retweets, where useful information is passed via retweets from one community to another.
The my final comment is that the speed at which twitter creates communities is increadible, firstly because of the requency of receiving concise packets of information, but also because you can almost tangibly see the relationships between people that you follow in a way that normally you couldn’t.
1) I agree with Mary’s comment. If you are following 6k people, you cannot reasonably read all those tweets daily let alone follow up their links or engage with them. This suggests a lack of genuine interest in the “people” you are following and possibly an alternative motive for following e.g. “jumping on the celebrity bandwagon”.
2) I currently follow 16 “people” on Twitter. I think my Dunbar number may stretch to 25-30, but only if I organise them into groups via Tweetdeck as it easier to find updates. I don’t really want to use Twitter as a social website but more as a method of keeping informed on my areas of interest. I review my choices regularly and discard them if my interests change or if they don’t tweet regularly.
3) Of the 16 “people” I follow, most are Info feeds such as Guardian Tech, Breaking News and sport. I chose these carefully because they interest me and I follow all the links. I also follow Eddie Izzard (I am a member of his fan club), Stephen Fry/QI Elves (I am a QI addict) and Dave Gorman. I follow all those links and visit their websites regularly. I post comments from time to time.
Hi Melanie,
Great post! I follow 148 people (some of whom aren’t active) at the moment, and am considering cutting down a bit.
The tweet volume/frequency does have an effect of course: you could follow 6000 people who tweeted once a week and it wouldn’t be a problem (as long as they didn’t all tweet at the same time!).
I completely agree that mindless following is stupid, but sadly predictable in this world of “bigger, better, faster, more”.
Regards,
Tim
In response to your Qs
1) It does seem impossible to follow 6,000 people with any level of engagement and worse it must surely stop you from engaging with even those you actually know because of the signal to noise ration.
That said tools like TweetDesk that allow grouping of contacts does make it possible to filter the noise or shape it usefully,
2) I follow 22 people of whom 11 I know personally from other contexts. I actively engage with about six on a regular basis
3) Aside from people I know personally I only follow people who have tweets and blogs etc. of interest to me.
Now follow me please :o) http://twitter.com/simonstanford
I suppose the lack of replies here demonstrates how few people do follow links.
Really fantastic post. I’m hitting my tipping point of how many I can pay attention too at about 320. Have been following more lately out of courtesy — quick scan of their bio, link, and recent tweets — less than a minute to do.
But — it’s clear this is not sustainable without parsing subgroups out.
I don’t agree with your conclusion about following large numbers of people as a game of social capital nor the idea that we follow people without knowing anything about them.
I follow a relatively large number of people because I use it as a away to tap into new ideas, thoughts and perspectives. It is also useful to get inisght and news about current happennings.
I don’t actively seek out people to follow. What I have found is that people that choose to follow me tend to be interested in the same sort of things I’ve tweeted about, and naturally I’ll be interested in what they have to say, regardless of how well informed they may be. I also believe, unlike facebook, twitter etiquette does encourage return following – BECAUSE – Its not just about friends its about news and ideas. Less asocial network and more a random community. Do you know everyone who lives in your neighbourhood that well – but would you be interested in their news and ideas about your neighbourhood?
I tend to watch out for spammers and people exploiting social networks to push their own products and services.
I also tend to stop following people when they tweet endlessly with little content or make dumb comments. Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross being two high profile examples in my case. Sometimes less is more and they just twittered TOO MUCH :)
As a relative Twitter newbie (and avowed FB skeptic), but general fan of new ideas, I’ve been surprised and disappointed at this attitude that I keep encountering (second-hand I must say) that there’s a right and a wrong way to “do” Twitter.
I also feel sorry for some of the well-meaning celebs who do their best to keep up with the stream of mostly rubbish that must flood their Twitter clients. Those I follow are people whose work I like or admire – and there are plenty of others who I like but who tweet so irregularly that I can catch up with them as and when the mood takes me in a pull vs. push model. In fact, Twitter surfing, as opposed to Twitter following, can be both enjoyable and informative, but that’s just how I like to use it. This is especially true as not many of my friends have been convinced of the merits of Twitter yet, and I tend to use e-mail/IM/pick-up-the-phone/meet-for-drinks to communicate with them anyway.
The other category of Twitter user not addressed in this interesting article covers people who use it largely as a newsfeed service. I think this raises an interesting point about users’ expectations of ‘interaction’ relative to the second-party’s commercial/personal engagement. Surely no-one would be offended at the BBC Breaking News not following them back, or the NY Times, but what about the boundaries between a high-profile person tweeting about both her/his private life AND publicising their career? If a film star chooses to use Twitter to promote upcoming films or media appearances and nothing else, then so be it. We can still bombard them with messages and they can do whatever they want with those. Yet as soon as someone tweets something we judge as personal, some users seem to read that as a signal and get offended when interaction [sic] is not reciprocated. I know this simplistically reduces many celeb-followers understanding and appreciation of the busy lives their idols lead, but I’m writing this off the top of my head so forgive me (I actually have work to do today!). My point is that we have a very fuzzy idea of how people we don’t know think about these issues, so why do we feel it’s ok to pass our own views off on them. If someone wants to follow 200 celebrities and spend most of their Twitter time messaging them in the limited hope of a response then so be it. I might have my own thoughts about it, but who am I to judge. They might equally think that spending an afternoon at Tate Modern was pointless and abstracted from the real world.
So, I’m not sure where this is taking me except to ponder that there is no right/wrong way to use social networking tools beyond adhering to the same set of ‘rules’ one might use in any offline social setting. I think the blurring of the public/private dichotomy for high-profile people is interesting, and seems particularly acute on Twitter and can lead to both fan and celebrity becoming upset. And that’s not a good thing.
To answer Melanie’s three questions above:
1)Mary is right, of course, that you cannot read the tweets of 6k people. Those that feel the need to be followed by random hordes might want to think about why. But if it’s not hurting anyone else then fine – of course they have no right to force their views on someone who follows 29 people (in fact 30 as I’ve just refreshed and see Melanie has accepted – thanks) and is followed by just 21.
2) see above… and my Dunbar number on Twitter would probably fall around 6 or 7 max.
3) Quite a lot of effort – i do vist the links, definitely read their tweets both their own broadcasts and their @replies. And look at who they follow, assuming it’s not in the 10,000 range!
Those of you still with me will be delighted to know that I’ll be quiet now.
Jonathan, thanks – but when you say I didn’t “address” other kinds of users I’d like to point out that this article wasn’t an overview of types of use but very specifically about Dunbars number.
I’ve seen lots of posts about “twitter use” profiles. This isn’t that sort of piece.
Though if it were, I would most certainly talk about the user you describe – as I am that type of user. More definitively, what Jay Rosen calls a “mindstreamer” (as opposed to life streamer). I deliver bookmarks as well as ideas, questions and probes.
And of course I’m sure you gathered from my post that I, too, don’t prescribe a “right” or “wrong” way of doing Twitter. As I’ve written before, I don’t like rules lawyers. Twitter is wholly emergent, as are the behaviours that so few of us are really thinking through.
This post was largely a response to the kinds of thinking that seem to be really narrowing the idea of what Twitter should be.
That said, my take is just that – my take. And it’s a reflection of what works for me.
Mark,
Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t think that all those who follow large numbers of people are necessarily gaming for social capital but that there are a large number of people who openly and actively do so. for example, many of the digerati – Loic Le Meur and Scoble among them – have openly (more so in the early days of social media) enjoyed a game of numbers. They joked about this in their networks and complained when administrators notified them that they had “too many friends” …
This isn’t true of everyone, nor did I say that it was. Though I can see how it was inferred by the following statement:
“As Mary points out, its one thing to follow 6K people, but quite another to engage that many people on any level beyond a fleeting @, which may only function as a token of social capital for those seeking micro-status or connection with high profile figures online (as so many of these SEO-social media marketers suggest newcomers to do …). Mary, like me, wants to use this tool to engage signal, rather than gaming it for social”
You’ll note I use the words “may only function” (“may” as in “might” rather than a more affirmative “does”) and that I say “Mary, like me, wants to use this tool to … rather than” in this I am talking about MY use and MARY’s USE, not anyone else’s.
Hope those distinctions are clear?
I know a number of very well intentioned and mindful high profile users of social media who follow huge numbers of people. But they only engage a small number of those people. Meanwhile, guys like Scoble claim that they are able to maintain relationships with thousands of people. I’m not sure how, and that was the reason for my post.
As for “tweeting a lot” that’s another matter. Noise to signal is interesting because it’s subjective. Depends what we consider noise (and what we’re there for). I feed a lot of bookmarks, which results in a higher than average volume of Tweets. That said, I am fairly mindful about tweeting stuff that has relevance for everybody. I don’t life stream and I don’t post very much that could be called “random” …
hi again – certainly wasn’t trying to imply that you’d overlooked any group of Twitter user, and understood that wasn’t the point of your article. I was just trying to relate the point about size of manageable/useful/meaningful networks with users’ (lack of) understanding of how those networks differ for each individual. Which some don’t seem able to do. And was of course wholeheartedly agreeing with you on the “there is no right and wrong” perspective. Glad the article has stimulated debate.
Jonathan – thanks for that reply! didn’t take offense at your first comment just wanted to make sure you understood where I was coming from. Sometimes people skim posts which can result in misreadings. I wanted to reiterate a few of my points because it was very important to me that my intention was clear. Especially on the matter of Twitter having to be one thing and one thing only – something I strongly object to (though now realise my post may inadvertently contribute to – though it was not my intention). Thus my ready reply! Thanks again for visiting my blog and engaging this post. All responses are welcome.
With over 3,000 followers/following, I certainly don’t keep up with every single person in my Twitter stream. I use Facebook to keep up with connections in a meaningful way. Twitter I use for crowdsourcing, information, a distraction.
I like to call Twitter my “watercooler,” as I’m a freelancer and have no co-workers. Cursory conversation is and was a part of our everyday lives, even before the onset of the internet. It’s a social need to be around other people, even if we aren’t “engaging” the masses in heart-to-heart chats. I’d be the type of person to chat with the hairdresser and the check-out guy, so I’m definitely going to use Twitter in the same way.
Sometimes people stand out, like Melanie for example. She and I have similar interests, and I’m getting to know her better slowly, over Twitter, FB, our blogs and chatterous.com. If it weren’t for those apps, I’d miss out on making a very real connection with a person who lives in another country.
I’m not the Twitter police, and I’m not sure anyone should take that job. Use it how you like. You always have the power to unfollow or block those users that offend you.
Purple car! thank you :)
You make a very important point about the use and integration of other social spaces and network activities as essential to making more meaningful connection. We cannot rely (nor should we) on one single tool to make a connection meaningful. In this we are social aggregators, finding points of connection and then drawing them out through other channels – like our blogs, bookmarks, email, facebook and skype. I’ve most certainly benefited from making your introduction, which was made possible by Eric Rice (who I managed to connect with despite his enormous follower count). He likely has an interesting perspective on this given his heavy engagement of his communities in various spaces.
This is really an interesting piece, and the kind of thoughtful post about an emerging tool that I feel we don’t see often enough.
I follow about 250 people. I would venture that 20 or so are blogs or companies that basically post their RSS, i like this because i can quickly scan their headlines without going to a separate RSS reader. Further, I think about 100 of the followers post regularly (1 or more times a day). They are mostly people I a) know personally from years of interactions at conferences and other events b) people i have recently met at conferences who work in a closely aligned field c) people i have never met but whose work i admire and is relevant to my work (with Drupal, Nonprofits, social media, etc…)
I @ reply people a few times a day (meaningfully) or retweet interesting (mostly link) tweets, i do this judiciously based on knowing my network of followers (i have somewhere between a smidge over 400 right now, i probably know who 200 of them are) and how they are connected. I often do not RT posts by highly followed people that many in my network probably already follow.
Various twitter clients like TweetDeck make it easier to manage “groups” of people that you follow, or search through twitter for hashtags. But I can’t imagine how anyone can meaningfully follow 6000 people. I think about @guykawasaki who recently revealed that he pays staff to tweet on his behalf — “ghost tweeting”, I wonder how many actual tweets he reads from the 100,000 plus people he follows. Interestingly @guykawasaki exhibits an inversion not often seen with celebrity tweeters: he follows more people than follow him!
So, what is my dunbar number? lets consider one more bit of data:
On facebook I have almost 300 friends, and most of them are people i currently know. I have only a handful from high school and college years, and they are people I am actually in touch with, or in organizations with.
(and then of course there are all the people with whom i maintain meaningful and near-completely offline relationships with)
All things considered, I would guess my number (be the definition at the top of your post) is somewhere around 170 +/- 15%
I’d love to see a website/service that would analyze your twitter and/or facebook networks and activity and tell you what it was.
Also, after reading your post, I thought about #followfriday, and I think I’d like to propose “#unfollowfriday” a day for clearing out the deadwood that you follow. I have recently started to cull my list of followers with the goal of increasing the signal to noise ratio. @scottfalconer suggested a new way of following: person + hashtag
Melanie,
Great article. I agree with Lesley (and others): “I don’t really want to use Twitter as a social website but more as a method of keeping informed on my areas of interest. I review my choices regularly and discard them if my interests change.” I have stopped following people who tweet too much pointless drivel and have become increasingly selective about reciprocal follows.
I’m a new user who found lifestream instantly off-putting, then gradually discovered mindstream. Ah! As a published novelist and university prof, I read and research incessantly and love to thrust stuff at others. I’ve found Twitter an excellent source of news and referrals to yet more great reading material, and try to limit my own tweets to material of interest to other writers, students, or educators. For an intro writing/research class I teach, I might add a twitter presence next semester solely for the purpose of trying to shove stuff down their throats….
As a side note, I bowed to peer pressure and joined Facebook at about the same time as Twitter, solely to be able to view my daughter’s recent vacation pix. Suddenly, I was swamped with friend requests from former students (I won’t befriend current students until they graduate) and, while I’m happy to glance at their wedding photos, etc., am glad my Twitter updates post to FB so I don’t have to bother checking in there very often. If we’re voting, I’d say I’ve found Twitter infinitely more useful than FB.
As for your questions:
1) I can’t imagine the noise of 6K! Impossible.
2) I added a bunch of publishers just last night, so I’m up to 116 follows/47 following. Some are newsfeeds for a quick scan only. I do agree my Dunbar is around 6, of which Melanie has quickly proven to be 1.
3) Since I don’t want mere noise, I am curious and selective. I’ve found friend lists from trusted follows to be an excellent source of additional like-mind-streamed individuals and organizations.
Keep up the good work, Melanie! I will send a link to this piece to a columnist at my most-read print newspaper whose fluffy piece on Twitter celebrity stalking today made me gag.
Oops! And by “I will send a link to this piece to a columnist at my most-read print newspaper whose fluffy piece on Twitter celebrity stalking today made me gag,” I mean to say: Twitter celebrity stalking has its place, but it’s not why I’m there; don’t lump me in with the lifestreamers, please!
I don’t follow people. Of course, it says that I follow a thousand or so, but it’s reciprocal (really, if anyone can reach me with an @, and DMs are locked down to mutual following, it’s really not even important anymore).
There might be a core group I ‘follow’, and there are certainly people who follow me who engage me, but most people are in that ‘ambient social circle’ classification.
Naturally, this might be breaking of the social rules. Well, it is. In fact, it’s downright egomanical and self-centered. My Twitter pages or apps (or Facebook, etc) are set to the @ME interface– a replies tab or even a search query with my name.
At first, I talk more than I listen, however it switches into conversation (yes, I believe Twitter = chat and most of my days are personally spent idling and ironically, watching a few chatrooms scroll by– the reason it is different is because everyone in the room is generally on the same topic or two– not an absolute disjointed mess of conversations I have to parse).
If something says something profound enough, it gets echoed over and over and rises to the top. Otherwise, I watch my followers if I’m bored and sometimes something pops up I’ll respond to, usually resulting in a bigger conversation.
Obsessing about ‘me’ first and community second, helps keep the overload down. For me.
Eric,
Thanks for your honesty. If you think you’re an ego maniac I can confirm that there are people who have far fewer followers than you and don’t even bother responding to @s or DMs (or worse, don’t follow anybody back). I personally don’t like the “follow” structure. It’s artificial and the undercurrent of need for reciprocation – and offense of not being followed back – creeps me out sometimes … (and the social valuation of certain follows over others just adds to that).
Is it ego or just a desire to have real and direct communication with those who are engaging you directly through a tool or just common sense? The reality is, for all of us, there are very few people in any of our networks that we feel inclined to engage on a regular basis. That said, there are a great many people who might post right_now_relevant stuff that relates to something you’re actively focused on (though you may otherwise not have much connection with that person). That has a lot of value and throws the dunbar question out the window (but that’s a pretty random way of engaging a system).
As always, I’d like to see more granularity. I remember you once cutting one of your networks down to 10 people. I’d love it if I could toggle between 10 arbitrary people and 10 people that i’ve selected and change this up whenever I feel like it (withouth anybody knowing specifically). I suspect we’ll be able to do this soon with some of the reader tools.
I also fantasized about some sort of radio dial to tune people in and out depending on what social “channels” we were in the mood for. There are days when I’m more in the mood for something political and critical and then days when I’m interested in something lighter and more playful. We can’t be all things to all people. Nor should we try.
I follow ~100 people, and I really do follow them. I also use search / RSS to track posts on topics of interest to me, one of those topics being me (i.e., any replies to or mentions of me).
I do think there’s a devaluation of social networks when person A follows B just so that person B will follow A and thus increase person A’s follower count.
In fact, I feel strongly enough about it that I’ve blogged about it:
http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/02/an-attention-ponzi-scheme/
http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/07/the-real-twitter/ (cited in the post)
And then I went as far as to propose a measure that would reflect attention scarcity and thus expose the silliness of this game:
http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/13/a-twitter-analog-to-pagerank/
What’s very cool is that Jason Adams went ahead and implemented this measure:
http://tunkrank.com/
Will that change the way people use Twitter? Probably not. But hopefully it helps move the conversation in the right direction.