Dunbar’s Number and Facebook App Blindness
Posted in 3D Social Networks, Blogging, Facebook, Recreation, Second Life, Social Networks, Video Games, Web 2.0 by wayne.porter on February 23rd, 2008 Andrew Wee makes an interesting observation about Facebook and how painful it can be to face mountains of invitations for applications, which he likens to Google Adsense blindness.
Being hit by irrelevant application invites, and with Facebook system where multiple people can keep sending you invites to the same app over and over again, and the best part is that you have to deny/ignore each application request one at a time, means you could be spending 15 - 30 minutes each day just getting rid of application requests…
So is this effective social marketing?
Should you still go out and develop a facebook app?
Effective? For the short-term- yes. Long term- no. Should you develop an application? Yes, but Facebook should be more astute and take a lesson from Dunbar…
Andrew notes that I like a certain game and asks for feedback:
Social marketers, I’m keen to hear what you’ve to say, maybe Jim Kukral, Sam Harrelson, Wayne Porter (whom I know is addicted to a particular insidious Facebook game…), Stephanie “Internet Geek Girl†Agresta, Robyn “Sleepyblogger†Tippins, Shawn Collins, or if you the reader might like to weigh in, drop a comment below…
Ironically the same game Andrew mentions I am addicted too is a game he had already mastered. Who knew we shared an interest in a certain insidious Facebook game?
Dunbar’s Number
I get many invites to groups, games and friend requests, and I don’t think I am near Andrew’s friend count of over 300. That is a significant being double that of Dunbar’s number. Dunbar’s number, approximately 150, represents a theorized cognitive limit to the number of individuals that one person can maintain stable social relationships, the kind of relationships that go with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person.
Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4): 681-735 .Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. He predicted a human “mean group size” of 148 (casually represented as 150), a result he considered exploratory due to the large error measure (a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230). Note it is exploratory because of the margin for error and this should serve as a caveat. Christoper Allen does some deep analysis and notes that 150 is probably on the high end if one is looking for group cohesion.
“hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. Anything more than this and the group has to spend too much time “grooming” to keep group cohesion”
The rise of MMORPGs, digital worlds, Second Life and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace has lead to more scrutiny on group size. Again Christopher Allen’s: Dunbar, Altruistic Punishment, and Meta-Moderation and Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections (Allen offers up some good cultural and technological strategies).
At any rate I simply ignore or delete the requests- unless I find them interesting. There is a handy link at the top of my Facebook sidebar called “Ignore All”. A cheap form of keeping my “Dunbar pressure” in check.
What I do find interesting is “who” sends me “what” as it is very telling and provides insight into an individual’s persona and one’s overall network.
Language and Groups
For the record I think “addicted” is a bit dramatic…ok perhaps not…but I need to get my gold/lumber! I have an incentive. I have found that when I put a personal message in a request I tend to get a higher return on participation. Perhaps, as Dunbar put forth, language is a “cheap” form of social grooming. Tacking on a note is about as cheap as one can get.
For example, with invites to Dark Art of the Ancients I sent out a request and explained how I found the cooperative aspects of the game interesting and more players signed up than when I just selected twenty…I would love to see some metrics, perhaps public, (likened to CJ’s EPC) on request conversion by category, incentive and cap (number of invites).
That might be a better metric than overall installations or percentage of people with number installed…and perhaps Facebook would be wise to place a cap on invitations dynamically. Application developers could do this as well, and some do, but it still falls back to Facebook who must maintain stewardship of the platform long-term.
I do think we are in for a new age of metrics and social networking sites should pay attention to the stress network size can have on individuals as this could lead to “application blindness”. Sure, we have control of our network size, but people really don’t want to reject others, we would rather ignore the message.
Bigger is Not Always Better
It makes me think back to the early days of affiliate marketing were success was placed on the number of affiliates one gained and little attention paid to quality or relationship efficacy. That has changed- at least from an affiliate force size standpoint. I feel there is still too much emphasis placed on “big hitters” and marketers lose by not working with micro-sized players who really can influence people. Then again, the marketer gets all the stress of too many relationships.
Glory and Money
This is illustrated by a form of recruiting new players in a web based battle game my son and I play..they give a linking option that humorously underscores the reckless attitudes that some marketers continue to embrace, yet I cannot help but chuckle when I read it…
To recruit gladiators, who will then fight for you in the arena, you have to place your trap link somewhere in the internet and wait until someone clicks on it:
http://s5.gladiatus.com/game/c.php?uid=92111
Tip: you can place this link into your homepage, use it in your forum signature or send it to your friends. Someone will be mugged by you as soon as the link is clicked. You will receive money and glory through this!
“You will receive money and glory through this!” does sounds much like affiliate pitches from a few years ago. “Mugged”…at least they are honest and didn’t try to throw in honor.
We Aren’t Meant to Scale
The real value from social networking platforms are the relationships forged and conversations to be had and Facebook applications or RPGs are great for this, but one should keep Dunbar’s number in mind. This is especially prudent in high immersion environments, like Second Life, where nothing seems to scale.
Social network quality is limited by design and Allen’s adjustments make more sense.
Andrew I will see you at the Summit so I guess we can continue the conversation at some point. If you are bored try Gladiatus- I will get money and glory through this and you can take a break from Facebook before you lose all of your vision.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Isn’t that the game you invited me to and where I warned you about? I think I also warned Andrew. It’s that RPG/Strategy game hybrid, right?
The “trap link” is funny… but then change “Gold” to “Cents” and “Game” to “Google” and you are looking at the dark reality of AdSense and Click Fraud.
I heard of the Dunbar number before, but did not spend serious time on it. You did obviously. I don’t think that Dunbar nor Allen considered that social networks online are not the same as social networks offline. In an online social network is it not necessary to “know who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person ..” in your network. Online social networks allowed casual contacts and connections that are much more casual than anything that exists in the real world. You can call it an additional “layer” if you’d like to. This additional layer extends the possible reach for getting to know people who you wouldn’t have “met” otherwise. It allows people to “probe” one another from a much greater and safe distance before they decide (or not) to get another person closer into one of the previously existing layers of our classic social networks. This is a good thing IMO, because it made people aware of much more things without the need to spend much tine on them to really “get to know” them.
as an example ( a stupid one that just popped into my head ). You might would have never know that the “Punk” across the pub shares the same interest in some type of art, even though he has a tattoo on his fore arms that depict a replica of a famous piece of art, because in real life you probably don’t get the chance to be close enough to each other to notice this. Now consider the Bar with the bar keeper as the additional layer when you and him happen to stand right next to each other for a moment to order a new drink for yourselves. While you see him waving his hand, you notice his tattoo and recognize it. You probably will asked him about it and he will tell you a story that you might find interesting. You will tell him that you are a big fan of this type of art and he might tell you that so does he… etc. etc. etc. you might end up as best buddies one day. The contact could have been broken at any point in time by any of you, if the common interests is not strong enough to be interested in taking it further. Now the odds of the initial contact happening the way I described is very low. It is commonplace everyday on social networks though.
Do you see where I am getting at?
Yes I do. I think we are on a course of interesting change.
[...] me, as merely a reference, bring up Dunbar’s Number (Dunbar predicted a human “mean group size” of 148 (rounded to 150) a theoretical [...]