Since I started using Steemit, I have found a new love for research. Since my Time Management post trended a few days ago, I have been trying to keep to the plan. One key thing that I noticed is that I am making a lot of notes under the researching column :).
I research a lot as I want to ensure that I can write with confidence, whilst not being a specialist on the subject. I have referred to Robin Dunbar in an earlier post as well, but then I read more about him. He is an Anthropologist, as well as an evolutionary psychologist, with a specialty in primate behaviour. While I was reading up on reputation building in the social media realm, I read something very interesting. There aren’t many people that can say they have a number named after them ... well Robin can ... Dunbar 's number.
Dunbar's number
Dunbar's number - 150 is the number of individuals with whom one person can maintain stable relationship with. He also argues that this number has not changed much throughout history. In an article in Phycology Today he explains that the theoretical number of 150 is not a homogenous group. Ito consists of 4 layers, or "Circles" which scale relative to each other by a factor of 3. The core of 5 friends - let's call them besties - and then outwards 15 friends, 50 Friends, and 150 friends. As we move outwards the number of people in the circle increases, but the emotional links with these people decreases. It actually make sense doesn’t it?
If Mr. Dunbar is correct about the 150 friends, is not really the point, maybe he is and maybe he is not. I always try to add value in the posts.
My personal use of social media.
I must say I am not really a massive Facebook fan, but it is a nice place to see how your friends from the past is doing and progressing through life. I am speaking about older friends, like school buddies, who they married?, do they have children? etc. I do not accept anyone to Facebook, only people I now. My wife will usually posts pictures to my Facebook profile from my phone, I don’t. What I might do on Facebook is use the Check In feature and the only reason I do this is that I am a very statistical person, and will probably at some point draw some graphs of where I have been for the past few years … You never know.
I am more fond of Linkedin than Facebook, as I am a Business Development Executive by profession. My main function is to sell IT solutions to businesses. LinkedIn is very useful for this and I have grown a fairly large following on LinkedIn. I will much easier accept an invite from somebody I do not know as it might mean business in the long run. I also have a lot of followers that are offering me alternative positions to my role. I get a fair amount of job offers, but I am not really somebody to move to frequently. LinkedIn for me is a business tool.
I use twitter a fair amount to promote myself and my business. I have grown a large, but not massive following. It definitely assists to promote business or get the word out when you have marketing campaigns etc. A very useful business tool.
and Steemit?
This is a very good question and too early to answer. As I mentioned in various posts, that I believe that it is a wonderful community, which will grow exponentially over time. At the moment the only focus I have is to build a good reputation as an author that covers a wide variety of topics, and that these topics are useful to the rest of the Steemit community at large. Looking at what Mr. Dunbar said, I might just use some of that information to build a community around me. So first step … Make 5 friends … Do you want to be my friend?
On a more serious note, it is not a bad idea to build communities around you. These communities will grow by up-voting each other's post and quickly push out those who does not fit into their community. You will soon find yourself in a community of Dolphins around you. It will be very useful if you can be in a community where each vote can push you up by $1 don’t you think.
It might sound far-fetched, but those days will come my friend, and I hope they never end!!
We just need to stick around, build a good reputation by writing posts that adds value to the community, make good friends and build a base of followers.
I loved @rock-sivante 's post which trended yesterday , especially the way he ended it.
You dig ?
Word :)
I now declare @jocor as one of my 5 closest friends on steemit, I got your back and I'm watching your six, steem on @jacor
@craig-grant - My main man of Steemit! Love your video's!. Been watching them religiously! Got you back as well my friend!
Yessir.
Huh so I have 150 friends to go
You've got a lot of friends here man.
Thanks man, That deserves a follow!
right back at cha
Lol ... I'll be your first friend :)
👍nice post @jacor , may I be your friend
Just followed you. :)
You will? Thank you bb
Just followed you, How's that for a start?
Yeah this is certainly true. Facebook friends are more like just people we know, then there's close acquaintances who I hang around with but wouldn't confide anything substantial in. Real friends are those who you could pour your soul out to, and those are quite few in life IMO!
Here is an example of a post that I would like to see here in Steemit. Thank you very much, @jacor! I'd say you're setting a vivid example of how to write and make friends and followers. I really like your works!
Today is my 13th day in the Steemit. And the first days the topic of money reward really excited me. Especially after Steemians gave me over 1000$ for my post. But now I'm getting more and more pleasure from communication itself. It's really a joy to read other people's thoughts, reflect them, answer and share your experience.
And it's great to constantly learn. This is the most exciting. I like to learn how to write better, how to express my thoughts and feelings better. Since I had been blogging outside the Steemit, I really like the writing itself.
Interesting fact of psychological research. All brilliant and great men kept diaries. They constantly wrote. Writing really contributes to the high level of consciousness. And a conscious life - a happy life.
Here's a visualisation of exactly the kind of 'small-world' effect you are talking about:
Each circle is a person, and a line between two circles represents a friendship. The larger the circle, the more friends someone has. Being well connected can be extremely valuable: to find out more, you can check out my post on how understanding the power of graph theory can help you to grow the Steemit network.
Thank you very much. I LOVE it. Just upvoted your older post and followed you. We'll definitely chat again.
@sunjata we meet again
Your graph proves that quantity of connections gives most to influence quality of your vote. It's a bit lopsided, no?
When I was younger I thought the more friends I have the better. Now I know it's not the quantity that counts, it's quality. I prefer having my few good friends around instead of many fake one. Life is like Steemit. You only want good friends around
Fully agree @timsaid
People will only sacrifice money for friendship while the trade-off is marginal.
Each dolphin individual in that "community" will be sacrificing several hundred thousand dollars a year by handing out upvotes to his "friends" (as I wrote in my last post) .
Most humans do not value online friendship so dearly, so I would wager instead what you will see are communities being formed among minnow users to pool upvotes, once individuals have grown to dolphin size they will exit these communities.
You might argue that they're all making money from voting on each other's material, but no material would have to be produced, and they could make much more, simply by leveraging their SP hoards.
@satire , I agree with your statement, and I have seen this many times over in my life! It is a pity that this happen but I also think it will. Only time will tell.
You are right. And #craigrant is building the strongest community here around him. I'm amazed by the enthusiasm of this guy.
its all about enjoying what you're doing, and the rep and votes will eventually catch up. especially as those communities you mentioned begin to coalesce. Once we get to a place where distinct communities within Steemit start to form, I think we'll see the true power of this idea come to fruition
Than you for the comment @prufarchy , and fully agree that it is all about enjoyment. I will easily be able to do this for a living - Steemit - I mean . Hope that we all can afford to do this at some point in our lives :)
Ps: As english is my second language I first had to look up the word -coalesce - Big word to use this time of day :) Hope to see you around.
I like that anyone with an Internet connection and a computer can afford to do this :)
Not to mention at least a computer
I hope you're right. I've made some passionate posts since I joined a week ago. So far, I feel invisible. I'm working on it. Appreciate the encouragement, and I love the level of quality I'm seeing in people's posts. I trust you're right.
Thanks for the comment @arise. I also realized that people are picking up the quality of their posts. I think we are all learning as we are moving full steem ahead!
Word
There was a point when I had 12 very close friends. It was a lot of work, but I was really happy. Then that fell to maybe a few. I think these numbers tend to go up and down over the years.
Very true. I have also learnt a few lessons through life of who real friends are. Same with business, made some mistakes in choosing the incorrect business partners and it always fail!
Family and friends make the WORST business partners. The best partners are ones that you network with at professional meetings. You share the same background knowledge while you both may bring totally different things to the table. I wonder if the 150 person rule applies to both personal and professional spheres, or if you can have 150 in one and 150 in the other?
That is a good question. I will have to put some thought into it, but my gut feel is that it includes all.
Well, you can have two standalone personality :-) But you will need so much of processing power! I think you don't!
The number 150 represents about how many emotional connections a person can have. A person can memorize the names and faces in the thousands (citation needed and the human brain is quite remarkable), but to actually be aware of and to personally know others on an emotional/deep level is limited.
So, to put in my 2 cents, 150 people that you actually know, and however many movie stars, pop stars, business folk, and whoever else depending on how well your memory functions (improved with use of a memory palace, i.e. method of loci).
As an introvert, I would crush under the weight of 150 emotional connections! :)
I literally went from 1500+ Facebook Friends to 200 right now. When I was aged 16-20 I had at least 20 very good friends. Now I am just 22 and I reduced the number of friends to less than 10 (those are the people I frequently spend time with). I think if you get older you appreciate more the valuable contacts and you move away from those who harm you.
Great view of friendships. I believe being emotionally invested in a lot of people would be debilitating. Whew!
I really enjoy statistical analysis as well and found the number 150 to be interesting. To me and maybe others, I feel were are too busy to have a circle of 150 friends. I know he didn't say that regular conversations were needed with each person, but if I were to scroll down my facebook "friends," I guess those I would actually consider friends are the type that you know you could call at any time if you needed help or support and they would be there for you and vice versa.
Many of the friends on facebook are old work partners and people from high school that I very rarely comment on or catch up with.
I've found most social media sites lately to be pretty vain. It's nice to see a site where people can be honest and not simply post selfies and not just show how great their lives are. A lot of social media sites cause depression, because people feel they are the only ones that aren't out having fun.
I hope to see more analysis of the various aspects of life and steemit in the future. Thanks for the great post.
Upvote.
See my method to cashout my SBD to Credit card
https://steemit.com/money/@emmarokt/hwkko-anonymous-credit-card-rechargeable-with-bitcoins-sbd-to-cc-atm-withdrawal
@jacor: If you'll be my friend, I'll let you have one of these.
Yes, you could be right.
Friends like gold :)
Another people just "partners"
@ belkins , agreed, when it come to close friends I can compare them to family.
ye :)
@jacor Thank you for sharing such a great insight in terms of social media. I am still open for learning with steemit as very new here, but I love the value people create by sharing their passions.
Hi @margot, I am hoping to share many more posts and hope that each and everyone of them are well received and insightful!
I think the objective number is much lower. Your friends are 6-7 people. Everyone else is just an acquaintance
I see what you're saying. Facebook doesn't differentiate the two terms of familiarity, i.e. "Friend," or "Acquaintance." I like the way Google Plus allows for specification on the level of friendship in our Circles.
150 ?? more like 0!
cries in a corner
LOL
I think even 150 sounds like a lot!
Yah, this article doesn't pertain to people in IT. That number should be more like 15... or maybe 5... lol
Correct,thats a lots amount
Very intriguing! I never knew that in my life, I will only be able to maintain stable relationships with 150 people!
That's the amazing thing about Steemit! I never new this as well. Steemit sparked something in me to read and research again and I am enjoying every second of it!
I have one and i am marrying her next year.
:)
Cheers! I gave you an upvote and literally my 2 cents!
Thank you @hutch !
I only have a couple of friends as such and the others are people I talk to but do not tell too much too as do not know them as well.
I thought the reason for 150 was that that is the number of connections a person's brain is physically able to keep track of, that is, 150 and all of their interconnections, (150 factorial?).
But if all you have to do is keep track of relations that have nothing to do with each other (like the modern day internet social world), I would think that number would be way way way way higher.
Just a thought.
:PThanks for this info.
150 can be quite a lot. Can you really have a quality longstanding and continuous relationship with so many people?
I was vote 288. I know that doesn't make me any portion of a portion of a percent of a future piece of money, but I appreciate this post. I mentioned my own use of Facebook and LinkedIn in my introductory post and I love the idea of 5-15-50-150. I also love that I came across it on steemit and wonder how long it would have taken me to come across it on another platform.
Good jobs. Thank for tips.