Last June at the 140 Characters Conference in New York, marketer Jeremy Epstein (@jer979) gave a talk about his strategy for using Twitter. The approach includes identifying key information providers in his areas of interest and building relationships with them.
Not everyone appreciated his insight, which was shared in the midst of a build-your-network crowd. There are a number of guidelines Epstein uses that I don’t, but I was particularly intrigued by one of his rules: “I don’t follow more than 140 people.”
Jerry Epstein talks about building relationships at 140 Characters in June 2009
Beyond the Twitter-tastic obsession with the number 140, there are a couple interesting aspects to this constraint of network size.
First, it is close to the Dunbar Number, 148. This figure is derived from Robin Dunbar’s work in the early 1990s analyzing social habits of primates. While the exact number is suspect and has been revised upward a couple times by others, the central insight is that our human brains can only manage so many people at a time. I contend that mechanical computation lets us to offload the cognitive load, allowing social network sizes to be considerably larger. However, Epstein’s strategy clearly echoes this notion of cognitive limits.
Second, as a platform, Twitter has been appropriated for multiple uses. Some of these are traditional information broadcast, like CNN pumping out links to their articles. Some are conversational, or require large mutual networks. Many reflect small existing social circles of offline friends. Along with other aspects of Twitter, I most value relationships.
Epstein claims the following limit allows him to consume and respond to all the content he sees, giving him insight into how these important people operate. While there is no shortage of blog posts condemning tweets about mundane things, these details are exactly the kind of cues one needs to strengthen relationships. It’s not clear to me whether Epstein would consider knowing what Anil Dash had for lunch as noise, but I believe this is precisely the information we otherwise only get if we are in the presence of a person. If relationships are valued, then context is, too.
My own network has grown from the 40 or so other early adopters in my geographic and academic community into a behemoth that swelled up over 800 before contracting a bit last month. With each milestone (100, 200, 500), I swore I was following as many as I could handle. It wasn’t until my recent workload surged did I feel I really reached some limit. Even with a bit of a purge—motivated by Epstein’s talk—I am nowhere near a Dunbar number.
I enjoy following people in my current hometown, Bloomington (although I have largely sacrificed other Indiana communities to be able to pay close attention to home). I’m also part of an academic program that adds several dozen new people to my radar each fall. Throw in GeekDad, Twitter folk, and high school friends, and it is difficult to imagine trimming down further. If anything, these sub-communities will continue to expand.
Still, the idea of selecting only 140 of these Twitter friends to follow is intriguing, if only as a thought exercise. The value I get from my network is a combination of information gathering, professional interest, and social obligation—most of which have a real relationship formation or maintenance underlying the flow of tweets. Any contraction of my network would still need to include representative sampling from each of these areas. Starting from scratch and building from my current following list, I quickly went beyond 140 and gave up. This might be a similar problem for about 40% of my tweeps, but the majority of people in my network follow fewer than 140.
If you are a Twitter member, what is the minimum number of people you would feel comfortable following?