« Heavy weather | Main | It's a plot! » Dunbar's number and online social networksCrossposted from Polycot: On the onlinefacilitation email list, Christopher Allen posted a link to his detailed post about Dunbar's number, proposed in R.I.M. Dunbar's paper Co-evolution of Neocortex Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans. Dunbar suggests that there is practical limit on group size for humans, generally thought to be 150 (as suggested in Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and other books on human social networks). Chris sees this as a misunderstanding of Dunbar's work, which "suggests that a community size of 150 will not be a mean for a community unless it is highly incentivized to remain together." He suggests in the email that "there are at least two nodal sizes of non-survival groups, one peaking at 7-8, the other at 40-60." These numbers are relevant to online communities and virtual teams. Large online communites like the WELL actually tend to contain smaller communities (which on the WELL are organized as "conferences"). Observation tells me that communities may have more members than Allen suggests, but many are inactive or "lurkers" rather than active participants. At Polycot we see the Internet as a platform for a "social Internet" or network of many social networks, the molecules of which are generally within the limits Chris suggests, at least where active participation in any one network is concerned. You could build a social movement as a network of individuals and and smaller networks (hubs). Question is, how do you sustain affinity within a network of "small pieces, loosely joined"? jon posted this at 11:52 AM |
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