Challenging The Dunbar 150

Today, Facebook announced it’s new search tool called Graph Search for locating information on people, places, interests, photos, music, restaurants, and more. 

Graph Search is still in beta, so you have to sign up in Facebook to get on the waiting list to use it. 

But Facebook is throwing down the gauntlet to Google by using natural language queries to search by just asking the question in plain language like: “my friends that like Rocky” and up comes those smart ladies and gents. 

But Graph Search is not just a challenge to Google, but to other social media tools and recommendation engines like Yelp and Foursquare, and even LinkedIn, which is now widely used for corporate recruiting. 

Graph Search uses the Bing search engine and it’s secret sauce according to CNN is that is culls information from over 1 billion Facebook accounts, 24 billion photos, and 1 trillion connections–so there is an enormous and growing database to pull from. 

So while the average Facebook user has about 190 connections, some people have as many as 5,000 and like the now antiquated business card file or Rolodex, all the people in your social network can provide important opportunities to learn and share. And while in the aggregate six degrees of separation, none of us are too far removed from everyone else anyway, we can still only Graph Search people and content in our network.

Interestingly enough, while Facebook rolls out Graph Search to try to capitalize on its treasure trove personal data and seemingly infinite connections, Bloomberg BusinessWeek (10 January 2013) ran an article called “The Dunbar Number” about how the human brain can only handle up to “150 meaningful relationships.”

Whether hunter-gather clans, military units, corporate divisions, or an individual’s network of family, friends, and colleagues–our brain “has limits” and 150 is it when it comes to substantial real world or virtual relationships–our brains have to process all the facets involved in social interactions from working together against outside “predators” to guarding against “bullies and cheats” from within the network. 

According to Dunbar, digital technologies like the Internet and social media, while enabling people to grow their virtual Rolodex, does not really increase our social relationships in the real meaning of the word. 

So with Graph Search, while you can mine your network for great talent, interesting places to visit, or restaurants to eat at, you are still fundamentally interacting with your core 150 when it comes to sharing the joys and challenges of everyday life. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Modesty In A Social Media World

New “love” app out of the U.K. called I Just Made Love (IJML).

This one is not for the modest or privacy-conscious.

The app is available for download for both the iPhone and Android.

Essentially, people are going out and using location-based services (i.e. GPS) and self-identifying their love-making–act by act. We’re up to 194,000+ already!

Not to be gross, but the app lets people not only report on doing the act and where, but also using check boxes with icons, you can identify the details such as the context: couch, indoor and outdoor, as well as how: 5 top positions–which is way more information than I care to hear about.

In our often hedonistic society, there are of course, other services such as Four-Square that lets you broadcast where you fulfill other bodily pleasures like eating, drinking, and shopping.

Personally, I don’t care to know what people are doing or where–too intrusive for my liking. But I can see why others may want to use FourSquare type apps (not IJML or who knows) with friends and family who may want to connect in this way–like to meet for Happy Hour at Old Town.

And certainly, marketers are interested in capturing valuable personal information on what you are doing, where and with whom, and using it to drive their sales and profits. Maybe you get a coupon out of it. 🙂

With the love app, it seems like some people want to brag, appear the Don Juan, raise their “macho” social status, or just perhaps enjoy being exhibitionists.

From my perspective, the main pro of this app is to promote the concept (not the act itself) of love over things like war, hate, discrimination, etc.

Even with that being said, it seems like some things are just better off left as intimate moments between you and your special other.

Interesting to me, this topic of disclosure came up big time in the Orthodox Jewish world with the publication in the Yeshiva University Beacon (5 December 2011) of a much written-about article entitled “How Do I Even Begin To Explain This,” where a frum Jewish girl from Stern College discloses her story of illicit rendezvous in a hotel room with a gentlemen and at the same time the “walk of shame the day after.”

The dichotomy between her “Orthodox” beliefs and her “secular” actions and her publication of this article in a Yeshiva newspaper and her explicit description of sexual deeds is a perfect example of the tear in our society between privacy and social probity on one hand, and the desire or need to share and be “free” of all constraints on the other.

As a social commentary, we are at a point where it seems that nothing is real unless we share it with others, and that can be good or bad–it can lead to greater wisdom and societal advancement or it can lead us to do things we shouldn’t do, are sorry we did, and where we feel shame afterwards.

>Safeguard Your Location

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http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=geotaggingsafety-110119134355-phpapp01&stripped_title=geotagging-safety

Nice presentation by the Army called “Geotags and Location-based Social Networking.”

It offers important information on the potential dangers of leaving on Global Positioning System (GPS) services on electronic devices (such as smartphones and cameras) and using location-based social networking services.

– “Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, videos, websites, and SMS messages. It is the equivalent of adding a 10-digit coordinate to everything you post on the Internet.”

– Location-based social networking applications focus on ‘checking-in’ at various locations to earn points, badges, discounts” and even become mayor for the day.

Exposing your location is not only dangerous if your in the military and engaged on an operation. But rather, for all of us, broadcasting location and patterns of movement can be detrimental to personal privacy and security.

As the geotagging safety presentation advises, consider when (and when not) to:

1. Turn off the GPS on devices such as smartphones and cameras.
2. Keep geocoded photos offline from the Internet (i.e. Flikr, Picasa, etc.)
3. Avoid use of location-based social networking services (e.g. FourSquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, SCVNGR, etc.)

Sharing information–including where you are, were and are going–with family, friends, and colleagues can be a healthy and fun interchange; but sharing that information with “the wrong” people can leave you exposed and sorry.

Think twice–think about your privacy and security.