Yesterday I found myself in a discussion regarding the pruning of my Facebook contacts by 14 down to 585. Sure, I’ve got a couple more that I intend to slash but at the end of the week the total former-facebook-friend carnage might amount to 18 or 20 people. Yes, I actually know the rest of them, could tell you how I know them, where I met them, and when we last spoke.
Apparently this makes me a bit of an anomaly.
As pointed out in the article “Facebook’s “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users’ Social Behavior” (thank you Maryam for the wall post), there is a term called the Dunbar number, which determines the maximum number of people that any one person can maintain stable social relationships with. As it turns out, Facebook finds this theoretical number pretty interesting.
Digression: I don’t think it had even occurred to me that Facebook might have an in-house sociologist on staff. I’m betting it’s a pretty cush job too, considering the options available to psychology majors in a recessionary environment. Moving on…
The big brothers at Facebook point out that most users only comment on 5% to 10% of their friend’s updates, no matter how large their friend list gets. This set of figures (available in the linked article) seems to suggest to only that 20 of my friends are worth keeping and the rest are but deletable fluff.
I’m not sure that’s the case.
There is a gem in this article, near the end, where Facebook is referred to as a broadcasting mechanism.
“People who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,’” — Lee Rainie
Now we’re getting somewhere! Let’s go a little beyond what the sociologists have considered, at least in a public context, because that’s as far as the linked article was able to take it.
By 2007, a number of journalists had begun to ask whether, like the innovation of language, the rise of the internet is once again allowing us to increase our total capacity for social relationships. Michael Rodgers at MSNBC went into some detail on this question in his 2007 article “How social can we get?” The question I would ask, in leading towards an answer, is this:
How much of communication in a relationship is based on transmitting vs. receiving?
In terms of who I interact with on a regular basis, I think Dunbar’s theories still apply. In terms of an online social network though, these are not regular contacts but neither are they unstable. With the advent of social networking websites, I believe we are seeing the emergence of weak social contacts who are stable.
A quick definition then:
- A strong social contact is someone stable whom we speak with on a regular basis. These are traditionally called our friends.
- A weak social contact is someone we are aware of when we see them but do not have any stable or regular discourse with. Traditionally, we call these acquaintances.
Due to a steady stream of updates, I have a periphery awareness of what a random sampling of 585 people are doing on a daily basis; the vast majority of whom are in the weak social contact category. When something interesting flashes across my screen I will think “oh, I should say something about that” and do so, thus ‘grooming the contact’ (to use Dunbar’s analogy) and keeping myself within the bounds of their social circle. When I take the opportunity to speak with a weak contact at greater length, I have a pretty solid basis on which to make conversation. Without Facebook I had… “So, um, what since High School? How’s the weather? Married yet?”
A traditional conversation rarely gets far beyond this point.
As I see it, while Facebook may not boost the total number of people in my strong contact group, it dramatically increases the number weak social contacts I am able to carry. I not only carry hundreds more of them than was previously possible but, thanks to the news feed, our communication is stable. Conversation with weak social contacts is informed and fulfilling. Every single one of them has the potential to become a stable friend in the strong social contact category.
What has amazed me most though, with the rise of the social network, is how frequently strong ties will trade places with weak ones and become a major part of my life. I can think of two people off the top of my head in the last three weeks (you know who you are) that have suddenly moved from the periphery to the fore. That isn’t to say the folks I am not as bonded to are any less important in my life – they have just rotated out of my main social group for the time being. While this was not impossible in the past, the frequency of shifts in the social fabric of my life is truly stunning.
In essence, the Facebook sociologist has looked at a Dunbar number and seen only transmittal of information as relevant to the size of a social group. I would contend that the real value of Facebook is as a broadcast mechanism, which keeps us in touch with a huge number of weak social contacts and allows for a much richer experience of both weak and strong social contacts in our daily lives.
Go on out there, skim your news feed, and learn what those weak contacts are doing. You never know who will suddenly become a friend, an employer, a business partner, or a mate. The possabilities of this brand new receiver-based culture are almost limitless.
When United Healthcare sent out a general bulletin including the background, symptoms, and risks of swine flu to all its members this morning, it got me thinking about this modern-day would-be-plague. When my buddy Colter out in Austin Texas mentioned the first local case of swine flu at the HEB where he does his grocery shopping, well, that kicked me into action.
