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April 01, 2008
Fave 5, 10, 20 how about 150?
In the US the cellular carriers are trying to convert us all in groups. “My BFF Jill”, and Fave 5 call groups are being touted like we are all knowing insiders in social network newspeak. But are these network suggestions of friends list artificial? What is the right number to consider in developing a network of peers and friends.
Antropologically speaking it seems to be 150 other people.
Dwight Irving has been trying to get my attention to these issues of social networking. He has introduced me to a community of Robin IM Dunbar fans. In particular I have been reading an article that asks the premise why would your body give 20% of its energy to support 2% of its mass. Or stated my specifically, why do we have brains?
The interesting analysis “we have brains because of our need to be social”. Now I am not going to take you down into social networks. But I am going to take us into the discussion of call patterns.
In theory what this says is that people function best in groups of less than 150. So in theory we should see a pattern in the way we call that hits a limit at 150.
It strikes me that this should reveal itself in a number of ways.
1) Call centers. If anyone has call center experience with a group that is greater than 150, I would love to understand how its organized. And if you see problems that you would not expect to see if you were running a group below that number.
In theory call support should be harder to maintain.
2) Billing Records. Our overall bill patterns should show repetition in numbering that relates to professional and personal social networks.
My own take is that women’s phone records should show greater spans of reaching the 150 mark then men because they manage more social items such as children’s schedules etc.
3) Sales. If I am reading this right now matter how many cold calls a person does they should in theory top out on quantitiy and start to exhibit quality numbers somewhere below 150.
I am sure there are other ways to interpret this and my own take is that it says something about the way we work as well.
If you keep a journal of your work like most of us do, you rapidly see that your conversations probably keep an inner core. Regardless of weather the people are on the inside or the outside of the company.
So now that I wrote this, let me ask do you think you have a limit to your ability to function above that number or not?
Background
http://www.commonsenseadvice.com/human_cortex_dunbar.html
http://www.liv.ac.uk/evolpsyc/Evol_Anthrop_6.pdf
Posted by carl at April 1, 2008 09:28 AM