Source: HP Labs: Twitter Under the Microscope
Jeremiah Owyang has a post that summarizes the key learnings from the HP Lab Research report. What stood out for me was that while social networks like Twitter can connect us to lots of people, we can only really develop deeper relationships with a small subset. This concept is known as the Dunbar number or 150 to be exact. Here's the key points that relate to this.
- Despite having large networks in Twitter, a smaller circle is maintained: For users with a high number of followers, they actually only still communicate with a smaller subset of users.
- Most users have a smaller inner circle they communicate with: Within a social network, it was found that most only frequently communicate with a small segment of users –even if one has a large community. Makes sense, everyone has an ‘inner circle’. Finding the true network that an individual has (even if they have thousands of “friends”) is what’s really important. Although Scoble solicits input from thousands of contacts, he leans on a smaller subset of folks to trust above all others.
This caught my eye because I've been thinking about the definition of a "flash cause" or "flash fundraiser" on Twitter and definitions. Something more to chew on.
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