Ever heard of Dunbar’s number? It means that you can build and maintain a strong social bond with no more than 150 people. That may sound like a lot, but now that social media has permeated our lives, it’s a lot less than you might have envisioned. The Dutch blockchain company AIOW take this into account.
The English anthropologist Robin Dunbar came up with this number in 1993. Officially it is about 148 people, but for convenience 150 is often held. Apparently it doesn’t matter how much your brain can handle, because there are only 24 hours in a day and all those people eventually need some time. The scientist confirmed his findings by researching prehistoric tribes, where the same hard boundary appeared to be present. That means that the limit has been engraved in our functioning for quite some time.
We also know that the phenomenon raises the head on existing social media platforms. Often the contacts we make are no more than giving a like or comment to someone we hardly know anymore. In fact, it is a facade that we keep intact because we do not want to lose our contacts.
If this Dunbar boundary is so significant, why do people today often have hundreds or even thousands of followers on ‘social’ media? You can only maintain 150 contacts, so why put everyone equally high on your social priority list? At the social medium of AIOW the border is right in the foreground.
On the platform you can give priorities to people and groups of your choice. That is also much needed for some of us; maybe you’d rather not see those vacation photos of your boss and save them for the coffee machine, while you want to pay more attention to your friends and family.
AIOW goes directly against, for example, Facebook’s algorithm, which presents you with everything that comes in. It is therefore possible that you are not at all waiting for the notifications that float to the top. So it can also be done differently, in a way that helps you to maintain the contacts you actually want to keep. Together we change social media!