I hate to go geek, but you know I can't help myself. Dunbar's number and the expanded Kennilworth number of about 300 (less famous because Malcolm Gladwell only talked about Dunbar in the Tipping Point) are based on the number of social relationships we can keep track of and their inter-related relationships as well. This is the theoretical limit based on the size of our neocortex in our brains, not something just pulled out of the air. So you can have casual relationships with many more than 150 or 300 people. However, the intimacy of the relationships change after you reach these thresholds. It's why, as the pastor said, a different type of management comes into play when the number of parishioners tops 300- you can't reliably track, for example, that Mary is best friends with Sue, who married Gerald's brother in law, and they each have three kids; Mary's mother is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, etc. You start to lose those details that bond a group together and allow you to track their lives like you would in a family group.
Twitter, where we all post some of the more mundane day to day stuff, allows a greater insight through ambient attention into these details; I find I remember more than I thought I could about what Jay is doing in Toronto, and how his baby is doing; That Mike is a new Dad in NYC and has started writing for Dad-o-Matic; etc. This means even when I see people I don't know as well as others, they will ask how the kids liked summer camp, or if the dog is okay after her surgery- there's an extension of the social and intimate relationship that is created through these tools. And if you share, people do the same. You might not be able to keep up with everything, you might lose details, but it sure helps maintaining a sense of intimacy even if you don't talk as frequently as you'd like with your friends. There are still connectors who are great hubs of information and know who to put together- Malcolm Gladwell writes about this phenomenon in another amazing piece called the "6 degrees of Lois Weisberg" you can find in the Kings of New Fiction edited by Ira Glass from This American Life. Some time soon, I'll write a post about the 6 degrees of Podcamp Boston- that in and of itself would be fascinating.
Brandon Cox
· 10 months ago
Very interesting thoughts. I'm a Pastor of a church which has about 300 attenders. I often feel stressed about not being able to keep up with everyone and do some freelance web design and plenty of social media interaction as well. Dunbar's number helps me understand and alleviate the stress. And your thoughts make me want to beat it as well. People are worth it!
adiaha
· 10 months ago
I have never been a good networker. I meet tons of people and then ultimately "let go" of these valuable resources by not staying in touch. My excuse is that my everyday life is already enough for me to handle. While this is true, I also have seen the value of being able to call on people who know your face for assistance and I know how I respond to people when I know their face. I tend to be faster to act. In that spirit 2009 has been chosen by me to be the year I actually build a network as large as possible. While 150 seems huge to me, I now can see 500 as a good attainable goal. Thank you for the organizational tip. If I conceive of any in my daily travels, I'll come back and let you know. Peace. adiaha
Bill Cammack
· 10 months ago
According to the definition: "... These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.", the tough part wouldn't be maintaining a relationship to 150 people, but rather keeping in mind what each of their relationships are to everyone else.
As soon as you add person 151, you have to understand what his or her relationship is to 150 people, which is really impossible to do unless you scrutinized their social involvements, which would necessarily take time away from interacting with the rest of the people in your set of acquaintances.
I think the interesting question is how many people can you possibly have mutually-beneficial relationships with at the same time, considering that the more beneficial someone is, the more you gravitate towards feeling interested in and following that person on social media sites & IRL.
Chance Black
· 10 months ago
I sold cars for 20 years. I built my own data base with FileMaker. It included templets for emails so things I said over and over were quick to wright. It allowed me to set dates to get back in touch at appropriate times and it had tags for everything. When I quit selling and sent a email asking folks in my data base to choose if they wanted me to continue staying in touch with them, the dealership to stay in touch with them or both. 25% wanted me only, 70% both, 5% opted out. 12% took the time to send me a personal email. I had 3,000 people in my data base. I sent a email newsletter every three months. It was not much but it was useful enough that I was in their 150. I seldom go anywhere that a customer does not say hi. I can only imagine what the results would be if I had been blogging and using Facebook.
Shawna Coronado
· 10 months ago
I do not believe Dunbar's number. Several years ago it was theorized that our brains are not capable of producing new brain cells after a certain age - that essentially we went downhill after that age because of depleted brain cells. However, recent evidence has proven that anything we do which is new and different builds new pathways. For example, we take the same route home from work every day, but when we change the route and go home a new way our brain has to rebuild a pathway to allow that to happen.
With that in mind - by stating Dunbars limiting number we are saying as human beings, our brains only have the capability to know and relate to 150 different people. In light of the recent discoveries about the capability of the brain - the fact that it is always growing and receptive to new situations, my feeling is Dubar's theory is a myth.
In my own local community I know and relate to hundreds of people. The question becomes at what intimate of a level do we relate? For instance, it is impossible to have 150 spouses. We'd all die of exhaustion from trying to take out the trash, drive kids around, and maintain intimacy, right? Knowing and building friendships of all levels, however, is quite possible.
I know because I am living it.
Tom Martin
· 10 months ago
Chris,
Couldn't agree more. I used to use my Palm and now I use ACT but the theory is the same. Let the database remind you, keep a running memory. One other item I'm sure you do, but if not, something you should. Get everyone's birthday. Then send them an email on that day or call or write a handwritten note -- depending on how "good" they are to your network I guess. I've done it for years and you'd be surprised how many times I hear "you were the only one that remembered...." -- that goes a long way to making sure I'm in their 150.
Speaking of, when's your birthday? DM me so I can add it to my database. Thanks. @TomMartin
Raven
· 10 months ago
This would take the process of networking to a whole new level. It might even enhance it a bit. Also, this post is helpful to those who are not sure how to fully optimize their own networks (or grow beyond it). I think the more detailed you define your networking relationships, the more powerful your connections can become.
Amar Patel
· 10 months ago
Really interesting... tagging as a replacement for memory. I work like that too - I live or die by database (and a good search!!!)
And what does this all mean for the maximum now? Are we talking thousands or infinite?
Great post.
Amber Naslund
· 10 months ago
Dunbar's number also operates on the assumption that 150 is a static number. Not only do I agree with you about being one of many *other* people's 150 (exponential is far more powerful than linear), the fabric of my network is very fluid. People drift in and out of the more active core of my network, based on lifestyle, geography, and need. So if 150 is to be believed (and I don't buy it), at the very least, the makeup of that 150 can shift and evolve over time.
It's not either about having a collection of people so much as it is a collection of purposeful relationships. My network of people is most powerful where the relationships have strong, purpose-related context, as opposed to just a mutually shared experience (like I went to college or a conference with that person). The strength of connections of those nodes in your network - and how that fabric evolves - will reflect the intensity of that context, either personally or professionally, at any given time.
Thanks also for mentioning that network cultivation takes effort and work. Amazing how often that point gets missed.
My insight from your comments is we typically sort our contacts according to business parameters. Yet, we know people busy with people they know, like, and trust. They do business with friends. All the more reason we should be sorting our contacts by those things we have in common.
I just started with Batchbook but think it will work well for me. I haven't fully imported because I have to clean up ten 11 years on another database. However, the Supertags will be key for me. I'm slicing speaking engagements by year, fee, topic, client, bureau, etc. This allows me to go back and say thanks, follow up down the road, and if rehired, know exactly where I left off, who I worked with, leads from the audience, product sold, and much more. .
We all tend to do a crummy job keep our databases up-to-date. Batchbook has simplified a lot of things that make that commitment easier. I love the Batchbox feature that works like Tripit - where you can quickly email on the fly and have a contact established. That's huge for me.
Cynthia Frisina Gray
· 10 months ago
Great thoughts. Found this very helpful. As the leader of a pediatric nonprofit foundation that operates at the intersection of the parent, medical research and policy worlds (and is very new to social media), your suggestions about how to categorize and manage networks struck a chord with me. It's something I've struggled with as our databases grow across various constituent groups and we look to build more collaborative bridges with people and groups for the greater good of children. Thank you for your always insightful and thought-provoking posts. www.twitter.com/reach4stars
Lisa Hickey
· 10 months ago
You did a great job of getting really specific about something I heard a while ago: “You don’t need to remember all the information you come across, you just need to remember where you stored it.” So, like you said, I store some information in my database, and some I keep conveniently stored in other people’s heads and some just remains forever on google or Twitter. If I need to find someone who is say “a TV producer”, I will make sure to access *all* my storage spaces to find them, and then base my choice on a combination of personal experience, other people recommendations and facts about that person. The chances of working with someone that *nobody* had never heard of before in any capacity is slim to none. Social networks are the cost of entry for everyone.
It's also interesting to watch how the social network itself becomes a "friend" -- people say "Hello Twitter, how are you"; they go to "it" (as opposed to an individual person) for help, advice, someone to talk to.
Lastly: My personal experience tells me that Dunbar's number is more likely to be around 500 people, perhaps higher, and, because of that, “6 degrees of separation” has gone down to 3 or 4.
Dmitri Eroshenko, Relenta
· 10 months ago
I am using Relenta to manage my database. It's different from Batchbook in that it has an activity stream for each relationship. That includes all sent and received email, tasks, notes, follow ups, reminders, files, you name it. Like a Facebook's mini-feed except for the record, we've implemented ours two weeks ahead of theirs :)
In Relenta, you can tag any object: email, contact, or activity item. Relenta is also designed for team environment, not just solo. You can add comments to emails, contacts, and activities as well.
Mike Gero
· 10 months ago
Very thought provoking, indeed. What's interesting is that with the social networking tools we have available to us, the relevancy of theories like Dunbar's number diminishes. From a business perspective, tools like Linkedin encourage us grow our network, and inherently our "network's network" well beyond what theory prescribes. These connections may not be as socially meaningful as the theory intended, but can prove useful when using "filters" to focus the network's relevance to a particular task at hand.
That said, it truly isn't about quantity here, it's about quality. The trick, as stated by yourself and a number of others here, is putting in the hard work to make these relationships more than just a number. If I don't know that LinkedIn "connection 365" just got laid off, and I could've hooked him up with a friend who's hiring, then my network has an "outage.".
It's interesting that Dunbar's Number isn't so far removed from the numbers discussed in the book Tribal Leadership. There, the conclusion was that "tribes" within organizations typically number 20-150 people (note the parallel to Dunbar's Number).
I tend to believe that 150 is on the low end. Dunbar was basing his numbers on (mostly) anthropological data and not giving much weight to modern communication tools. But - whether the number is 150 or 300 - the point is well taken - that it's not possible to maintain meaningful and deep social relationships with thousands of people.
doughaslam
· 10 months ago
I love the dunbar discussions- it has always fascinated me.
I probably found that I lost control of my Twitter network as a whole once it passed 300 people. But rather than retrench, I just started using it differently. I still expand as much as possible to create as many potential touchpoints as I can.
As for Dunbar's number, I think of the mini-networks as lots of "Li'l Dunbars" - not a whole lot different from what you write about, Chris, but perhaps I'm a bit less formal about cataloging them.
My Li'l Dunbars can be formal groups (colleagues, clients, classmates, New York, etc), or more "Flash Dunbars" that arise out of a conversation then die down, perhaps to arise in a different form, with slightly different people, at another time.
It's not how many people are in your network, it's how many people you ra re talking to at the moment.
Robert Tolmach
· 10 months ago
Some other handy fields for your database:
-- the name, phone # and email address of the person's assistant -- info on where you met the person (fields on who introduced you, that person's company, at what type of event, where, when). So when all you can recall about the person you're looking for is that Howard Greenstein mentioned them last summer, or someone from Apple introduced you at TED, you're golden. -- spouse's name and company -- former business affiliations (who was that guy who used to be at Skadden?) -- shared affiliations (Jerry's kids, your college, etc., so you can search those groups)
Kristin T. (@kt_writes)
· 10 months ago
Very interesting post. In my 9 or 10 months on Twitter, I've found that the NUMBER of people in my network matters far less than the deliberate intention behind each individual connection.
In other words, if I have 300 people in my network, who I've collected rather quickly and randomly, without really knowing why each individual is unique and interesting to me, then I will probably feel overwhelmed by that number. A general sense of chaos will be attached to it.
But if I take my time, really examining new followers to figure out what they're about, and maybe even holding off on following them back until there's some sort of interaction or connection, they have a meaningful place in my network (and in my mind) from day one. It's a much slower way to build a community, but I think being deliberate like that makes Dunbar's limit pretty much irrelevant.
Mark O'Toole
· 10 months ago
Everyone needs, though does not necessarily have, a system to manage contacts. I agree with your approach Chris -- segement your relationships so you can interact with the "sub-groups" in meaningful ways. This can work for individuals managing their databases with tags and other segmentation (FYI, LinkedIn has a tagging feature now), but globalizing management of these databases to a corporate level becomes difficult. I still struggle with how to best interact with -- at an agencywide level -- with the contacts of my 20+ staff people. Collectively, these 20+ lists of contacts represent great opportunity as touchpoints for new business, information, vendor identification and more, but managing and organizing them as a group is hard -- for now, at least.
busse
· 10 months ago
I just wanted to leave a quick comment to say thank you for linking to Batchbook -- I have been looking for a tool like this that will display RSS feeds from a contact (blog, twitter) so I can see someone's most recent tweets / blog posts before I contact them -- this appears to do just that with their SuperTags feature so I am very excited to try it out -- thanks!
Malcolm Bastien
· 10 months ago
I work at building the strong and close relationships. The lighter relationships are nice but they often happen on their own without me even trying. I like how these are just smart strategies to use, no matter whether you consider Dunbar's Number or not.
Jen Zingsheim
· 10 months ago
I've thought about this a great deal, as I think Dunbar's Number/Dunbar Corollary do present implications for social media. My conclusion is that Dunbar's number doesn't apply to social media, because these aren't relationships, they are "acquaintancships." The relationship limit covered by Dunbar's Number is closer to what you describe at the end of your post: real, flesh-and-blood these people matter to me-relationships.
Politicians have for years pushed well beyond the upper limits of Dunbar's Number, as far as contacts/established personal acquaintances. I've seen it, I worked in politics. Some of these men and women can remember families back generations, people they've met at fundraisers, donors, constituents, lobbyists--I have a good memory, but some of these people amazed me. But they weren't relationships in a sociological setting like Dunbar postulated. Like so much in social media that gets mentioned, turned around, and examined, there's nothing really *that* new here. It's just that people who aren't accustomed to thinking in these terms are now confronted with it.
Net, I don't think expanding social circles is about beating Dunbar's number. Now, if one has the depth of knowledge and understanding about the personal goals, family life, deep exchanges with 300 or more people, we can talk about beating Dunbar's number, IMHO.
Jen
Jodith
· 10 months ago
Thanks for this article. Thinking of my relationships as subsets makes since, especially in Twitter, since I have so many interests and people to keep track of in all of them. I've bookmarked this to be able to take a more in depth look and do some thinking on it later.
Michelle Riggen-Ransom
· 10 months ago
Thanks Chris for your mention of BatchBook! You've definitely hung a few extra zeros on Dunbar's number - glad we can help you better manage it.
Just wanted to let folks know that we have a special promo code for Chris' readers. He thinks you're all rockstars and so do we, hence the code "rockstar". This will give you an extra free month from any paid account (for a total of two free months). Give it a whirl, drop us a line. And if anyone out there is working on a cloning device, please let Mr. Brogan know asap.
Nicholas Chase
· 10 months ago
Chris,
I am able to cultivate many more relationships by commenting on blogs, following Twitter contacts and spending time just simply caring more about others than myself.
If I can help you in any way, this gives my life purpose. If we collaborate on a business deal that makes us both money, great! But it should not be the underlying factors building the relationship. If you are genuine, authentic and helpful, people see this constant in you and respond accordingly.
It is truly amazing how late in life I discovered these keys!
We have a short-term memory limit. It determines how many concepts we can deal with at once. It determines our risk tolerance. The space between the short-term memory limit and Dunbar's Number is an opportunity for systems augmentation.
Bill Tamminga
· 10 months ago
My experience has been that the most important financial relationships happen to be loose connections. The most important emotional relationships are my close connections. It's important to feed both.
Justin Long
· 10 months ago
In my experience Dunbar's Number has to do with the quality vs the quantity side of the equation. You can have far more people "databased" and socially connected that you can be in touch with... but 150 near-friends and 15 deep-friends is about what I can manage.
Dave Pancost
· 10 months ago
Excellent post, Chris. Whether one agrees with the Dunbar number or not, the reality is that relationships need to be managed. BatchBook sounds like a great tool. I'm going to check it out right away. I need something as I grow my online relationship base. This sounds like a good tool for that purpose. Thanks for the post, Chris. I found it very valuable.
Isabelle Ayel
· 10 months ago
Suggestion about "how can I remind each person of my network and find the appropriate one when I need it,quick" . Chris has a good method but he had to add tags and sometimes you miss to put the right tag or no time to find the good one. What about a tool with a non-structured database and a search engine which searchs all over one single word you enter in the data base? This is what I use: I do not bother with tags, I enter each person with all his story in one article of my private wiki (mediawiki). Then if I look for the women who cooks the best "spagetti alla carbonara", I enter "carbonara" in the search box. Et voila! Hope this will help.
Ton Zijlstra
· 10 months ago
Dunbar's original number, 148.3 or something, was an extrapolation of human group size based on the group sizes of other primates that were maintained by grooming, related to their brain sizes. It is a predicted number of group size that we can maintain by grooming, under survival conditions, given the size of our neo-cortex. Dunbar himself postulated that language was the way humans overcome that number. We don't groom a whole lot anymore after all (usually nuclear family excepted). And most of us here do not live under survival conditions. So treating this number as an upper limit to what number of relationships we can maintain is rubbish. It's not what the theory was about in the first place. If it was an upper limit we could not have grown beyond nomadic hunter gatherer groups and have formed more complex societies.
There are group sizes that feel more comfortable to us, which may very well have to do with Dunbar's predicted number. Personally e.g. I feel I can 'slip' into a context complete with its relations between others, and then move on to the next context of say 150 people. The same with teams (around 5), basic groups (around 12), larger groups (around 25). Feeling comfortable in certain group sizes is not the same as having upper limits.
Ellen Naylor
· 10 months ago
Chris I think the major point you make is that social networks allow us to connect with 1000s of people, and if that's your game you need to organize your contacts in ways that are useful to you, so you can find them again based on your needs and theirs. I have done this since 1992 using ACT! which I still use. I include classifications like how and where I met them, such as an association, a luncheon, their industry etc. I also take notes about things that we talk about or a few words about their life, job changes periodially which is really handy since I am dummer than Dunbar's number so I needed to resort to organizing my contacts way before 150!
The beauty of social networks and blogging is that you can connect with people you would never have before. So I like to take advantage of those many loose connections by organizing them, since I enjoy connecting people with each other too. It isn't just about me.
frank
· 10 months ago
I don't think Dunbars # applies in todays age of databases :)
From Wikipedia: "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."
In the age of social networking online (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc...) we CAN far exceed Dunbars #, but my understanding of this # is that it is meant to apply to relationships in the 'real' world (meaning met in person) and was thought of before the online social networking/database driven 'relationships' existed.
We need a new Dunbars # that accounts for online database driven relationships.
I think you provide some valuable suggestions on how to maximize the number of people we can have relationships with, and how to maximize productivity along those lines. I still think Dunbar's number is essentially valid, however - I would say the key is understanding that the 150 refers to truly "meaningful" relationships, and I suppose the definition of"meaningful" might vary from person to person, depending on their interpersonal skills, memory and of course, value system.
Derek
· 10 months ago
Hi Chris,
Thank you for writing this post. When you said "you need to database your contacts" in our quick chat, it hit me in the stomach. How could I have overlooked such an easy solution? So, I was looking for a way to do this and I settled with excel. However, the key take away from Chris's post is that you need a system — excel or batchbook both work.
Now since I've been doing this for a week, I can't talk about how it changed my life. However, I do see the opportunity on the horizon and I will be sure to write about it at some point or another. Thank you again Chris.
The Writer Mama
· 10 months ago
Thanks for adding the addendum. I'm trying to figure out this distinction, so that my close friends and family members neither feel like part of the 150 nor strive to be part of the 150. Not sure if that made any sense, but the fact that you compartmentalize/discriminate the two makes me feel better. Can you say more about the addendum and the way you separate your personal life from your business life? Thx!
Daryl Sturgess
· 10 months ago
I came across Dunbar's book - Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language about 5 years ago. Browsing through it in a bookshop, I realised it might offer an explanation for something I had observed in men's peer support groups for years, and after reading it, I am convinced it does. I was looking for some explanation for the deeply calming effect generated by certain types of inter-male interactions in men's groups.
In addition to basic hygiene benefits, grooming amongst our primate ancestors acted as social glue through its endorphin-generating effect resulting from the trusted physical touch of another. Grooming is a peaceful activity that passes in silence. It effectives provides a natural mini 'high'.
I then suspected and am now convinced that only certain types of speech-based connections between humans generate an effect similar to that which grooming produces among primates.
And that is an intimate conversation, ones not restricted to sexual intimacy. Dunbar makes the point that in our most valued relationships we dispense with talk and revert to hugs, embraces and affectionate touch. When two people engage in an attentive, one-person-speaking-at-a-time, with frequent long pauses before a response type interactions, then the 'grooming effect' is most likely to occur.
I would suggest that an appreciation of that dynamic is essential to engaging with the question of whether Dunbar's 150 number can be exceeded and how technology might assist or impede that process.
Sally
· 10 months ago
This article reminds me of the efficient method I use to minimize the time I require to find my kind of entertainment on the net: I have a "portfolio" of approximately 10 bloggers whose blogs I skim once a week. These bloggers are "connectors" or "thinkers"-- they have links to the most popular videos, articles, video games, quizzes and photos going around the net. The initial time investment to find each such blogger might be an hour or two, but it is well worth it in the long run. I look for a blogger who posts at least once a week, has posted in the past week, and has an interesting backstory (I read his or her entire archives). I don't have to go looking at all the different popular video sites (YouTube, Snotr, Shoutfile, Hilu, etc., etc.) and all the different newspapers, magazines ezines, etc., and go Googling all the different video game sites and quiz sites and photo/joke sites on the net. I simply skim my bloggers. :)
All Comments
So you can have casual relationships with many more than 150 or 300 people. However, the intimacy of the relationships change after you reach these thresholds. It's why, as the pastor said, a different type of management comes into play when the number of parishioners tops 300- you can't reliably track, for example, that Mary is best friends with Sue, who married Gerald's brother in law, and they each have three kids; Mary's mother is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, etc. You start to lose those details that bond a group together and allow you to track their lives like you would in a family group.
Twitter, where we all post some of the more mundane day to day stuff, allows a greater insight through ambient attention into these details; I find I remember more than I thought I could about what Jay is doing in Toronto, and how his baby is doing; That Mike is a new Dad in NYC and has started writing for Dad-o-Matic; etc. This means even when I see people I don't know as well as others, they will ask how the kids liked summer camp, or if the dog is okay after her surgery- there's an extension of the social and intimate relationship that is created through these tools. And if you share, people do the same. You might not be able to keep up with everything, you might lose details, but it sure helps maintaining a sense of intimacy even if you don't talk as frequently as you'd like with your friends.
There are still connectors who are great hubs of information and know who to put together- Malcolm Gladwell writes about this phenomenon in another amazing piece called the "6 degrees of Lois Weisberg" you can find in the Kings of New Fiction edited by Ira Glass from This American Life.
Some time soon, I'll write a post about the 6 degrees of Podcamp Boston- that in and of itself would be fascinating.
As soon as you add person 151, you have to understand what his or her relationship is to 150 people, which is really impossible to do unless you scrutinized their social involvements, which would necessarily take time away from interacting with the rest of the people in your set of acquaintances.
I think the interesting question is how many people can you possibly have mutually-beneficial relationships with at the same time, considering that the more beneficial someone is, the more you gravitate towards feeling interested in and following that person on social media sites & IRL.
With that in mind - by stating Dunbars limiting number we are saying as human beings, our brains only have the capability to know and relate to 150 different people. In light of the recent discoveries about the capability of the brain - the fact that it is always growing and receptive to new situations, my feeling is Dubar's theory is a myth.
In my own local community I know and relate to hundreds of people. The question becomes at what intimate of a level do we relate? For instance, it is impossible to have 150 spouses. We'd all die of exhaustion from trying to take out the trash, drive kids around, and maintain intimacy, right? Knowing and building friendships of all levels, however, is quite possible.
I know because I am living it.
Couldn't agree more. I used to use my Palm and now I use ACT but the theory is the same. Let the database remind you, keep a running memory. One other item I'm sure you do, but if not, something you should. Get everyone's birthday. Then send them an email on that day or call or write a handwritten note -- depending on how "good" they are to your network I guess. I've done it for years and you'd be surprised how many times I hear "you were the only one that remembered...." -- that goes a long way to making sure I'm in their 150.
Speaking of, when's your birthday? DM me so I can add it to my database.
Thanks.
@TomMartin
How does this relate to chunking? Should it?
And what does this all mean for the maximum now? Are we talking thousands or infinite?
Great post.
It's not either about having a collection of people so much as it is a collection of purposeful relationships. My network of people is most powerful where the relationships have strong, purpose-related context, as opposed to just a mutually shared experience (like I went to college or a conference with that person). The strength of connections of those nodes in your network - and how that fabric evolves - will reflect the intensity of that context, either personally or professionally, at any given time.
Thanks also for mentioning that network cultivation takes effort and work. Amazing how often that point gets missed.
I just started with Batchbook but think it will work well for me. I haven't fully imported because I have to clean up ten 11 years on another database. However, the Supertags will be key for me. I'm slicing speaking engagements by year, fee, topic, client, bureau, etc. This allows me to go back and say thanks, follow up down the road, and if rehired, know exactly where I left off, who I worked with, leads from the audience, product sold, and much more. .
We all tend to do a crummy job keep our databases up-to-date. Batchbook has simplified a lot of things that make that commitment easier. I love the Batchbox feature that works like Tripit - where you can quickly email on the fly and have a contact established. That's huge for me.
www.twitter.com/reach4stars
It's also interesting to watch how the social network itself becomes a "friend" -- people say "Hello Twitter, how are you"; they go to "it" (as opposed to an individual person) for help, advice, someone to talk to.
Lastly: My personal experience tells me that Dunbar's number is more likely to be around 500 people, perhaps higher, and, because of that, “6 degrees of separation” has gone down to 3 or 4.
In Relenta, you can tag any object: email, contact, or activity item. Relenta is also designed for team environment, not just solo. You can add comments to emails, contacts, and activities as well.
That said, it truly isn't about quantity here, it's about quality. The trick, as stated by yourself and a number of others here, is putting in the hard work to make these relationships more than just a number. If I don't know that LinkedIn "connection 365" just got laid off, and I could've hooked him up with a friend who's hiring, then my network has an "outage.".
I tend to believe that 150 is on the low end. Dunbar was basing his numbers on (mostly) anthropological data and not giving much weight to modern communication tools. But - whether the number is 150 or 300 - the point is well taken - that it's not possible to maintain meaningful and deep social relationships with thousands of people.
I probably found that I lost control of my Twitter network as a whole once it passed 300 people. But rather than retrench, I just started using it differently. I still expand as much as possible to create as many potential touchpoints as I can.
As for Dunbar's number, I think of the mini-networks as lots of "Li'l Dunbars" - not a whole lot different from what you write about, Chris, but perhaps I'm a bit less formal about cataloging them.
My Li'l Dunbars can be formal groups (colleagues, clients, classmates, New York, etc), or more "Flash Dunbars" that arise out of a conversation then die down, perhaps to arise in a different form, with slightly different people, at another time.
It's not how many people are in your network, it's how many people you ra re talking to at the moment.
-- the name, phone # and email address of the person's assistant
-- info on where you met the person (fields on who introduced you, that person's company, at what type of event, where, when). So when all you can recall about the person you're looking for is that Howard Greenstein mentioned them last summer, or someone from Apple introduced you at TED, you're golden.
-- spouse's name and company
-- former business affiliations (who was that guy who used to be at Skadden?)
-- shared affiliations (Jerry's kids, your college, etc., so you can search those groups)
In other words, if I have 300 people in my network, who I've collected rather quickly and randomly, without really knowing why each individual is unique and interesting to me, then I will probably feel overwhelmed by that number. A general sense of chaos will be attached to it.
But if I take my time, really examining new followers to figure out what they're about, and maybe even holding off on following them back until there's some sort of interaction or connection, they have a meaningful place in my network (and in my mind) from day one. It's a much slower way to build a community, but I think being deliberate like that makes Dunbar's limit pretty much irrelevant.
Politicians have for years pushed well beyond the upper limits of Dunbar's Number, as far as contacts/established personal acquaintances. I've seen it, I worked in politics. Some of these men and women can remember families back generations, people they've met at fundraisers, donors, constituents, lobbyists--I have a good memory, but some of these people amazed me. But they weren't relationships in a sociological setting like Dunbar postulated. Like so much in social media that gets mentioned, turned around, and examined, there's nothing really *that* new here. It's just that people who aren't accustomed to thinking in these terms are now confronted with it.
Net, I don't think expanding social circles is about beating Dunbar's number. Now, if one has the depth of knowledge and understanding about the personal goals, family life, deep exchanges with 300 or more people, we can talk about beating Dunbar's number, IMHO.
Jen
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I am able to cultivate many more relationships by commenting on blogs, following Twitter contacts and spending time just simply caring more about others than myself.
If I can help you in any way, this gives my life purpose. If we collaborate on a business deal that makes us both money, great! But it should not be the underlying factors building the relationship. If you are genuine, authentic and helpful, people see this constant in you and respond accordingly.
It is truly amazing how late in life I discovered these keys!
Respectfully,
Nicholas Chase
www.twitter.com/nachase
What about a tool with a non-structured database and a search engine which searchs all over one single word you enter in the data base? This is what I use: I do not bother with tags, I enter each person with all his story in one article of my private wiki (mediawiki). Then if I look for the women who cooks the best "spagetti alla carbonara", I enter "carbonara" in the search box. Et voila!
Hope this will help.
Dunbar himself postulated that language was the way humans overcome that number. We don't groom a whole lot anymore after all (usually nuclear family excepted). And most of us here do not live under survival conditions. So treating this number as an upper limit to what number of relationships we can maintain is rubbish. It's not what the theory was about in the first place. If it was an upper limit we could not have grown beyond nomadic hunter gatherer groups and have formed more complex societies.
There are group sizes that feel more comfortable to us, which may very well have to do with Dunbar's predicted number. Personally e.g. I feel I can 'slip' into a context complete with its relations between others, and then move on to the next context of say 150 people. The same with teams (around 5), basic groups (around 12), larger groups (around 25). Feeling comfortable in certain group sizes is not the same as having upper limits.
The beauty of social networks and blogging is that you can connect with people you would never have before. So I like to take advantage of those many loose connections by organizing them, since I enjoy connecting people with each other too. It isn't just about me.
From Wikipedia:
"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."
In the age of social networking online (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc...) we CAN far exceed Dunbars #, but my understanding of this # is that it is meant to apply to relationships in the 'real' world (meaning met in person) and was thought of before the online social networking/database driven 'relationships' existed.
We need a new Dunbars # that accounts for online database driven relationships.
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http://twitter.com/franswaa
Thank you for writing this post. When you said "you need to database your contacts" in our quick chat, it hit me in the stomach. How could I have overlooked such an easy solution? So, I was looking for a way to do this and I settled with excel. However, the key take away from Chris's post is that you need a system — excel or batchbook both work.
Now since I've been doing this for a week, I can't talk about how it changed my life. However, I do see the opportunity on the horizon and I will be sure to write about it at some point or another. Thank you again Chris.
In addition to basic hygiene benefits, grooming amongst our primate ancestors acted as social glue through its endorphin-generating effect resulting from the trusted physical touch of another. Grooming is a peaceful activity that passes in silence. It effectives provides a natural mini 'high'.
I then suspected and am now convinced that only certain types of speech-based connections between humans generate an effect similar to that which grooming produces among primates.
And that is an intimate conversation, ones not restricted to sexual intimacy. Dunbar makes the point that in our most valued relationships we dispense with talk and revert to hugs, embraces and affectionate touch. When two people engage in an attentive, one-person-speaking-at-a-time, with frequent long pauses before a response type interactions, then the 'grooming effect' is most likely to occur.
I would suggest that an appreciation of that dynamic is essential to engaging with the question of whether Dunbar's 150 number can be exceeded and how technology might assist or impede that process.