by AJ George
"Now, Momma said there's only so much fortune a man really needs and the rest is just for showing off." –Forrest Gump
Could it be that the same applies to our Facebook friends? According to a study still in its early stages by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, his previous assertion that people can only maintain meaningful relationships with 150 people holds true even in the age of social networking (where we can have 5000 Facebook "friends"). Apparently the human brain can only cognitively handle and maintain roughly 150 relationships, even if through Twitter and LinkedIn you are connected to thousands of people.
The study has been all aflutter on news outlets and the internet recently, but this is not a new topic. In fact, a year ago, Chris Brogan wrote in his community and social media blog about Beating Dunbar's Number. He upholds Dunbar's Number as fact, but asserts there are ways to work around the theory and maintain networks with more people. One example: databases. He puts in the typical info for his contacts (name, number, email address, etc) but goes further and adds tags so he can easily find people depending on where he is, where he's going to be, and what he's doing.
Furthermore, Jacob Morgan of the SmartDataCollective's blog asserts that as far as social networking is concerned, Dunbar's number is "irrelevant" because our weak connections are so much more important to networking than those relationships we consider meaningful, those that would fall into our core 150. He cites Morten Hansen's Collaboration when he states that when networking for the purposes of gaining new jobs or knowledge, relying on your close friends who know many of the same things and people as you do, can prove frivolous. Furthermore, those weak ties take less time to establish and are easier to maintain.
So when it comes to our virtual friendships, perhaps there is strength in numbers, as long as we don't expect too much from too many of those friendships, and instead see the untapped potential in our myriad loose affiliations.
About the author: AJ George, a cum laude graduate of Towson University, is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the soon-to-be released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.