Here is a great example of how to use Social Media to advance your brand – Bob Taylor of Taylor’s Guitars – cost nothing to make – captured a moment when millions will look – very personal – lots of good advice – offering a real service.
Why can’t you do this?
If we are to use the power of the network effect to gain more leverage – I think it will be essential to understand the underlying math. For like all things in the natural world – such as say Gravity – there is a mathematical framework that underlies their operations. When Newton could describe how Gravity worked, the modern world took off. When we can do the same for social networks, we will be on our way to solving the great dystopia of our time – that we have succumbed to a machine model.
The power of the social world is like gravity or light. It seems mysterious. It is easy to wax mystical about it. But I think that what is emerging via observation – just like all good science – is the math. What is ironic is that this math is well known and has been part of human knowledge for millenia. It just has never been applied to the social world before.
It is of course the Fibonacci sequence – the sequence that nature uses to order all relationships if they are to reach their full potential. You may know of the key number that seems to be the limit of Trust for humans of about 150 – called the Dunbar Number after Robin Dunbar.
Many in the Blogosphere have been working on this. Many have seen the sequence emerge naturally in say Guilds in Gaming. Some like Stowe and Valdis are seeing this in the power use of Twitter.
Here is a summary post I made on my own blog 2 years ago that pulled together the field of knowledge that existed then. It is my hope, I am a Historian, that people with a sharper brain than I can add much more to this in the future. I am more convinced than ever that the true potential of the power of social media to get important things done will be revealed once our understanding of how all of this works improves.
Not just marketing and media – but the ideal groupings for work, for learning for health, for credit, for families and for all of our lives. A world reset to our natural design versus a machine world.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Dave Snowden posted this recently – I could not get Cognitive Edge to accept my comment so I post them here after his post and then add some comments and list of useful links that add to the topic.
Log(N) = 0.093 + 3.389 log(CR) (1) (r2=0.764, t34=10.35, p<0.001)
Recognise it? Well of course, it’s the best-fit reduced major axis regression equation between neocortex ratio and mean group size for the sample of 36 primate genera taken from Dunbar’s 1992 paper which was popularised, and not unduly trivialised by Malcolm Gladwell into a natural limit on human group size of 150 (or 147.8 to be exact). The idea is a simple one. The human brain has co-evolved with social conditions and as a result there is a natural limit on the number of social relationships we can maintain. Dunbar linked the number to village, nomadic and military size over time. The number is exercising several people on the ever idea-stimulating value networks list serve. The argument there relates to if this is or is not a natural limit on a network or a virtual community.150 is not the only natural number. There are two others, so I could have titled this post The rule of 5,15 & 150. All of those numbers, plus a need to think more about identity than about individuals, should influence either evolutionary or engineering approaches to community/network design.What I plan to do is elaborate the numbers and their origins. I then want to look at the way in which the debate around Dunbar’s law is limited by atomistic ontology. This all too common assumption, found in the anglo-saxon world assumes self sufficiency and moral autonomy of the person, and sees communities as assemblies, voluntary or otherwise of individuals. Moving away from social atomism allows to take a different view on communities, their limitations and possibilities, but that will be tomorrow’s blog.
- Five is linked to the natural limits on the short term memory. This was first put forward by Miller’s 1956 paper and relates to time more than items (it is a common urban myth to see it as items). This means that it will vary a bit by language, different languages can compress more or less data into a defined time limit. If you have ever spoken through simultaneous translation then you will know that it takes 30% longer to say something in Spanish that it does in English. Given that the Welsh generally speak english 30% faster than the norm, this can present problems! Translation aside, the number is useful and it relates to common sense experience (always helpful). Think about how many directions you can remember, or how we organise telephone numbers. Another way to validate this is to think about models, or lists and see how many elements they have. More than five and you need a crib sheet. One of the reasons I restrict models in my own work to five elements is because of this. Less then five and they pass the paper napkin test which means they are sense making models as they can be drawn from memory, which means they can be used operationally without reference back to authority.
- Fifteen comes from anthropology and relates to natural levels of deep trust. I define deep trust here as the ability to tolerate a degree of betrayal. The number varies a bit based on the average size of the extended family in a society and is probably an habituated pattern of behaviour learnt during key periods of plasticity for the human brain. Now readers might be able to help be here. I got this number from two sources several years ago. The number was actually an upper limit of thirty but I reduced it to fifteen for alliterative purposes as well as accepting the realities of modern civilisation compared with the tribal systems from which the number originated. Unfortunately I have lost the reference and I am trying to re-discover it to reference in the book. All help appreciated! Again this manages a common sense test. Think about the social groups to which you belong and which pass the relaxation test. This test is a simple one, its who do you feel able to relax with, without worrying too much how your are seen. I realise that this does not always apply to families! However other than in pre or post divorce situations the ideas is that it should. The size there is definitely under fifteen, and more typically is a small number of groups of around eight or nine on average.
- One hundred and fifty is Dunbar’s law and in effect is the number if identities that you can maintain in your head with some degree of acquaints that an individual can maintain. It does not necessarily imply that you trust them, but it does mean that you can know something about them and their basic capabilities. In other words you can manage your expectations of their performance and abilities in different contexts and environments. For the moment lets consider this in terms of individuals (the switch to identity is for tomorrow’s blog). Consider your work groups and the size of your organisation. How many people do you know by name? How many people would you invite to a party? Again you can see the common sense experience coming though in the number. Now the assumption in Dunbar’s working and subsequent writing is that this level of knowledge requires physical proximity. However we now live in virtual as well as physical worlds so the nature of interactions change. The natural limit is probably in place, but its form, and the nature of its creation will have new variants for a new environment
Now these three numbers, 5, 15 & 150 have an alliterative quality which helps us remember and use them. They also have some fairly immediate and practical implications for communities and networks. That is what I want to look at in tomorrow’s blog which will come from Hong Kong. I am shortly leaving for the KMAP2006 conference at which I am keynoting for the second year, and I will also run workshop on uses of narrative in knowledge management. Hopefully I will meet up with some old friends and make some new ones, the conference has an interesting mix and looks less academic that last year when it was held in Wellington, New Zealand.
Great to find more discussion about these numbers. My bet is that by thinking only mechanistically we have “forgotten” their power and organize without any socially valid reason. This may surely be why so many organizations are so dysfunctional such as schools with say 1500 kids and no sub units. Why hospitals that merely have shifts of individuals are so unhappy. Why there is so much “stress” in most workplaces when the work itself is mundane.
The military however still keeps to these numbers. They have to – the task before them demands the full expression of what an organized group of people can do – they tend to use 8 as the base (8 men in a tent in the Roman army = a section) Sections “shrink” to 5 very quickly in action. Below 4, they are not very capable.
My bet is that 5-8 seems to work as the core unit of intimacy. Most sports teams fit this range. It enables you to pass the ball to a space knowing that the person will be there. It enables uspoken flow. It must have been the ideal hunting size.
Dave talks also about the limits to memory. You can remember a 7 number phone number but longer numbers, unless broken into sections of 3 and 4, are very hard to recall.
I recall other material suggesting that most “Tribes” in the hunter gatherer world (our cultural base) were about 35. 8 men and 8 women plus 16 youths and younger children. 35 is the platoon in the military which is the core organizing unit to get any serious work done. The Company would be about 200 as an paper ideal but would shrink in action to the 150 number which is the operational ideal.
VC friends of mine tell me that they get very concerned when they see new companies reach these staffing milestones of 8 -15 – 35 – 150. The hardest one being 15 -35 when you have to introduce some formal communication mechanisms. Complexity obviously does grow exponentially along a log scale.
Other work on gene pools suggests that 500 is the optimal number to keep enough variety. Hence tribal meetings for festivals etc that acted as genetic mixers as well.
What if these hard social numbers were brought back into formal prominence? What would happen to organizations? We see this with blogging now. My blogging social world has settled out along this gradient of 8 close intimates – about 16 close – about 35 reasonably close and a maximum world of 150. My test is my bloglines aggregator. I pay attention along the gradient.
I have also found that I can be assured that those that fit inside the 8 really do fit. I have worked with 2 of them before we ever met face to face.
So is this just an interesting topic or might it lead to an OD revolution? I add some good supporting links in the follow on:-
Chris makes the point that while guilds have these total group numbers, it is rare to have more than 40 online at any one time. More on guilds by Chris here
He goes deeper and deeper into the friction that we feel inside organizations today because we do not consider the fall out from not understanding how these numbers work. I find this diagram very helpful -
This confirm my VC friends observation that going from a group of 7-8 to 50 plus is exceptionally difficult. Moving beyond 150 is also a chasm -
I’ve already noted the next chasm when you go beyond 80 people, which I think is the point that Dunbar’s Number actually marks for a non-survival oriented group. Even at this lower point, the noise level created by required socialization becomes an issue, and filtering becomes essential. As you approach 150 this begins to be unmanageable. Once a company grows past 200 you are really starting to need middle-management, but often you can’t afford it yet. Only when you get up past that, maybe at 350-500 people, does middle-management start really working, primarily because you’ve once again segmented your original departments, possibly again reducing them to Dunbar-sized groups.
Venture Capitalist Jeff Nolan relates similar concerns:
“It strikes me that the social networking theory holds that the more volume you have, the bigger your network will become by introducing degrees of separation roughly along the lines of Metcalfe’s Law. I disagree, human networks do not grow in value by multiplying, but rather by reduction. For me, it’s the quality of relationships that enhances my professional and personal life, not the sheer numbers.”
If you know of other good links please let me know.
The show Bryant Park Project has been off the air for 2 show days and what is happening?
There are nearly 300 members of the BPP Diner that are assembling at a NIng site that is there to catch the fall out from the show.
This is twice the norms of the Dunbar number of 150 that will assure a healthy self-regulated site. My sense if that the site will grow much larger.
In only a few days I am seeing a number of patterns:
But I think one of things that we all miss is more structure – a hard core centre of content. I suspect that if we cannot repalce this – the site will die for nostalgia can only supply so much energy
My bottom lne is that the site is a very important experiment – can a community site with only a handful of volunteer admins create enough energy from content to keep us all coming back and to expand the site?
If we can find the answer, then we will have found the holy grail I think
So my friends – what to do – how do we put a sun into the centre of this system that will act as both the gravity pull and the energy push?
Search has not been at the forefront for many social media sites. They’ve focused on drawing traffic, building a brand, and looking for a business model. But, there is a great opportunity for social media sites to leverage search in new ways. I decided to take a look at a few top social media sites to examine how they’re using search and what’s missing.
The sites I selected were drawn from top site lists on Web2Center and Technorati. (Interestingly, I had difficulty finding the top 100 blog list on Technorati through its site search. I had to resort to a web search.)
What Can We Learn
The common denominator across these sites is to have a standard search box with a results list showing basic information about an item, and in most cases, some teaser text. Beyond that there is variation, with some sites not doing much more than the basics.
1. Old News is Old News
Freshness is an important factor in search. Social media often becomes a sequential feed. Allowing users to sort and view by date gives them a reference point from their last visit.
 |
  |
| [Click to Enlarge] | [Click to Enlarge] |
| Squidoo provides sort by recently updated | Digg lets you narrow by timeline and anchors on how long something has been popular |
2. Show Me What’s Popular and What’s Authoritative
Social media volume is growing. Providing insight into popularity and authority helps users make a decision to explore or not.
 |
  |
| [Click to Enlarge] | [Click to Enlarge] |
| lifehacker shows # of views and comments | Digg shows # of diggs and comments and top across all topics |
 |
|
| [Click to Enlarge] | |
| Technorati gives an authority ranking based on “the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months” |
3. Categorize To Help Me Navigate
The cloud navigation feature started with “most popular” lists. But what about most interesting to me? Enter tag clouds.
Categorization, both predefined and user-defined, is an important way to help users digest content, find related information, and navigate directly to what they like.
 |
  |
| [Click to Enlarge] | [Click to Enlarge] |
| Technorati provides a tag cloud that is dynamic and changes constantly while you’re sitting on a page (while it’s interesting to see this, I don’t know if the value outweighs the distraction it creates) | Engadget provides static categories, but they’re buried below the fold |
 |
|
| [Click to Enlarge] | |
| TechCrunch allows you to navigation by company or product |
4. Connect Me to the Community
Social media sites expand connections to link users to users. Not only does this allow users to build a community and find experts, it also helps them uncover new content by exploring what others are viewing.
 |
  |
| [Click to Enlarge] | [Click to Enlarge] |
| Digg lets you see a contributor’s favorites, recent activity, history, friends and their activities, and digg stats – great insight into a contributor’s behavior and likes | StumbleUpon shows recent “stumblers” and provides “people who like” front and center at the top of search results |
 |
|
| [Click to Enlarge] | |
| Technorati links you to a contributor’s blogs and exposes how popular each blog is |
What’s the Opportunity
Through social media, search teams have a new source of input. With this they can build new practices around “social search” taking all the clues provided to uncover user behavior, intent and preferences. Social search is not limited to externally-facing sites. It also can be applied to sites behind the firewall that employ social media techniques.
Some additional ways search teams might use this input include:
We are just starting to tap the value of this source and the ways in which we use the input will expand.
FAST
I think that one of the barriers of conventional Story telling TV is the imposing amount of gear that has to be used to “Get the Quality”.
If you are confronted by a interviewer, a sound man and a camera man with a huge camera on his shoulder – it’s hard to open up.
If the topic of what is on the table is a hard one – then maybe you will not open up. We are for instance finding it hard to get people to talk in St Louis about losing their homes – whereas it was easy to get people to talk about their experience in the war. We are starting to debate how we can reduce the barriers to story and hence to engagement.
This traditional approach – where interviewer is outside the story themselves – is not engaging enough.
Here then is my ideal. Molly Dineen making her brilliant film – The Lie of the Land – Available in full on Google Video.
This film is about the death throws of farming in England and about the barrier between city folk who think that food comes from the supermarket and the country folk who struggle to produce food for a living when the supermarkets and the government do all they can to break them.
What is so special about the film is Molly’s POV. By working alone with just a small camera – she is part of the story. Her warmth allows the natural dignity of the inarticulate to shine through and to give power to the thoughts of people who could never speak other wise.
There is no barrier between her and the people or the actions in the film.
The film has caused a storm. It seems to be the Silent Spring of our time. The wake-up call.
It is the technology of the mini cam that has allowed her to change the relationship between the film maker and the subject. This brings out the emotional power of the story. It is the technology of the web that is allowing you to see this film whenever you want. The new social web brings us depth and distribution. A great story will travel.
A warning – Molly shows the reality of life and death on the farm. NO shrink wrapped beef here.In so doing she reminds us of the real cost of our food – a cost that goes beyond money.
On September 29 from 1-2 p.m. EST, the FASTforward blog hosted a great conversation with Beth Simone Noveck, US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government and Andrew Rasiej, the co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference and website covering the intersection of politics and technology.
Highlights of the discussion, which touched on issues of transparency, collaboration, risk management and more, are available here.
Be sure not to miss our interview series with several dozen attendees of FASTforward'09, including all the contributors to this blog, as well as Clay Shirky, Charlene Li, and many other notable thinkers and doers. The interviews are tagged and can be accessed by topic.
Check out the first of a series of guides to the 2.0 world from the contributors of the FASTforward Blog. This and future FASTforward Blog guides aim to deepen understanding about topics we think critical to the future of the enterprise and how people and organizations communicate, collaborate, innovate, and more.
Be sure to catch dozens of great interviews from last year's FASTforward. Among the topics discussed between host Jerry Michalski and the speakers, panelists, attendees, and contributors to this blog: enterprise 2.0, search, the user revolution, the future of content, and much, much more.
This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges. More info here...
Blog Policy
Contact us
Contributor Bios
The FASTforward blog is produced by Beeline Labs.
Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog
Jie Li's Enterprise Search Blog
Powered by WordPress and Fjords04 Web Design Services, based on Qwilm.
Charles Armstrong
Jon Husband
Bill Ives
Jevon MacDonald
Jim McGee
Joe McKendrick
Sean McClowry
Rob Paterson
Paula Thornton
Phil Wainewright
Yuri Alkin
Jeffrey Fried
Ryan Jones
Leslie Kues
Rob Lancaster
Joe Lichtman
Hadley Reynolds
Zia Zaman
Rod Boothby
Jerry Bowles
George Dearing
Carl Frappaolo
Dana Gardner
Kathleen Gilroy
Tom Mandel
James Robertson
Euan Semple
David Weinberger
