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	Phil's Blogservations Friday, March 16, 2007 Posted by philgomes 3:14 PM Twitter, FWOT Analysis, And Dunbar's Number FWOT, in case you don't know, stands for "Fu..." Umm... I mean "Fine Waste Of Time." You business school types are probably more familiar with "SWOT analysis." Training yourself in judicious "FWOT analysis" will ultimately make you happier in day-to-day life. Costs a lot less, too. Anyway... My recent experiences with the Twitter microblogging service reminded me of a concept that I once learned from a conference panel about six years ago: Dunbar's number. According to Wikipedia: Dunbar's number is a value significant in sociology and anthropology. Proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, it measures the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships". This number, as it turns out, is often rounded up to 150 people. In another words, the quality of your relationships is likely to decline after you spread your social network much beyond that number. Now, perhaps technology is helping us raise this ceiling — that's a topic for a separate discussion. I suspect, however, that the "Dunbar Number," as poured through Twitter, is significantly lower than 150. As of this writing, I count 30-ish folks as "friends" on Twitter. I think it's highly likely that, once this number crests 45 or 50, I'll probably start to ignore this service — the FWOT variable will get entirely too high. In social media — and in a great many other things — the Dunbar factor and the FWOT factor are inextricably linked. Here's what I'd like to see in order to scale this service: Friend categorizing/tagging: I want a me2 group, PR industry group, family group, and so on, with pages and feeds for each. Privacy features: Self-explanatory. IM and Text Interface: I want it to actually work. It dropped all of my IM-entered messages yesterday. During Eric's and Shel's talks today, it dropped my text messages too. Email to Twitter: Curious by its absence. Maybe 'cause an SMTP server would take to much horsepower? "@user" Messages: These should be made into direct messages. I miss too many of them otherwise. Rules as a premium service: I'd pay money to be able to save a rule into Twitter that said "Text me ONLY if [friend/followee] twitters something about [keyword]." While the service seems to have gone gangbusters over the weekend, I'm definitely in wait-and-see mode when it comes to Twitter, and from more professional curiosity than personal interest. Technorati Tags: twitter | HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a free video game console. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This is the blog of Phil Gomes, SVP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.