According to statistics published by Facebook, the social networking site has 300 Million active users and an average user has 130 friends.

Last year Newsweek carried an article (by Steven Levy ) that the average number of friends in Myspace was 180 (May 2008).

Twitter is not exactly a social networking site. However, it has some elements of “engagement – “followers” to your tweets, and, how many tweeters one manages to follow. Sysomos reports that 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers and 92.4% follow less than 100 users. A study by Cornell University had found that, on an average, a Twitter user had 80 people following him (Dec, 2008)

Anthropological Limits to social interactions

Robin Dunbar, a British Anthropologist, back in 1992 used his observation on non human primates to theorize that humans can form a social group size of approximately 150 . There was a large margin of error in the study (95% confidence interval stretching all the way from 100 to 230). Dunbar based his predictions on the size of neocortex, a more recently evolved part of the brain, thought to be responsible for maintaining social relationships. The size of neocortex, according to Dunbar, places a limit on the processing capacity in individuals while forming stable social relationships. Needless to say that Dunbar faced a fair share of criticism. Some other researches (Anthropologist H. Russell Bernard and Peter Killworth) in US have come up with larger median size of 231 or mean value of 290 in different studies.

Human Primates -Social networks

Viewed in this context, the data on group statistics from the two large Social Networks, and to some extent Twitter, shows a striking closeness to the Dunbar number as interactions spill over from purely physical neighborhoods to virtual networks. The limitation represented by Dunbar’s number goes deeper than the environmental or external ability to craft and cultivate large number of meaningful social relationships.

Overcoming the challenges

This limit presents some structural challenges for companies trying to reach larger groups to engage “ friends” through MySpace friends or Facebook Fan pages or any other social platform. Ads, of course, can potentially reach a far larger set of viewers but are not regarded as a favorable vehicle for spreading marketing message in the social networks.

Tools can help expand the social reach, but usually these tools act like sensors only and provide limited help in deepening social engagements. Expanding organizational setup to extend beyond the anthropological limits presents significant ROI challenges in scaling .

This is where the stronger appeal of a sustainable Word to Mouth campaign comes in. You focus not only on the “friends” in your group (at the first degree of separation), but also on “friends of friends”, and depend on this second level to carry the message to other networks. In short you should target “friends” of your “friend” who are part of other networks, rather than focusing solely on enlarging your immediate group.

The social networks may carry the sobriquet of being monkeyspheres, but seriously, managing your social networks is hardly a monkey’s business.