Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist who recently introduced his theory of Dunbar’s Number. This theory explains the limit to the number of people you can realistically be friends with. The number is apparently 150, and Dunbar says this is the only amount of friends your brain is able to handle and this also applies to popular social network, Facebook.
He supports his argument with traffic data, Dunbar says that you can have 1500 friends but when looking at traffic on sites it is noticeable that people keep the same inner circle of about 150 friends. Another company, Gore-Tex, keeps its employees in small teams as in larger teams the relationships between people will begin to deteriorate.
The number is different for males and females says Dunbar as girls can maintain relationships by only talking and guys however need to do activities together. Dunbar says he keeps his Facebook friends circle to about 100 friends. He also says having thousands of friends is not meaningless as if we should add businesses colleges, family and other acquaintances together the number will be well over 150 as for real friendships the number stays at about 150.
“ONLY 150 Facebook Friends”? Hell man, I don’t think I could do justice to 50 friends on a personal basis!