Within the realm of social networking, the number of friends/followers/recipients is an indication of the relative level of success a user will have at sharing information. Famous individuals, corporate entities and other well established user accounts on social networking websites are constantly identified and have the potential to reach millions of friends/followers/recipients (for simplicity purposes the friends/followers/recipients will be referred to as data recipients or ‘recipients’). However, when the number of recipients reaches into the thousands, the social networking paradigm begins to break down.
It may be said that small and obscure groups of people who are passionately interested in a specific subject may be more likely to focus on finite tasks and accomplish their goals. Online social networking tools should be capable of fostering these sorts of clusters. But, when the conversation grows too large the focuses are often expanded and the recipients may lose interest quickly. Not only do audiences of recipients feel estranged, the participants also start self-censoring. People who suddenly find themselves with really large audiences often start writing more cautiously and behaving like politicians or corporate drones.
In one example, if someone or one user account has obtained 1.5 million recipients on a data messaging application, clearly they are among the rare and famous online individuals. Their response and data messages may include anything as they have already reached instant fame. In another example, if you have a hundred followers, you may be considered to just be merely chatting with pals. The middle ground—when someone amasses, roughly several thousand recipients, the social aspect of social media begins to fall apart by trying to keep their interests perked.
FIG. 1 illustrates a graph depicting a number of data posts on a social networking user account in relation to a number of followers or data recipients of that particular user account. Referring to FIG. 1, it can be noted that the number of posts leveled-out after a user obtained 400 followers. According to the graph, it can therefore be theorized that once a user has more than 400 followers. The user account or sender did not increase the number of posts, but the number of posts remained around the 800 level.
The intimacy of the social network begins to change when the number of recipients grows into the thousands. For example, unlike when there are a limited number of followers, the user or sender begins to believe the recipients are satisfied with the content of the posts being sent. As the number of recipients grows, the user is hesitant to share the same intimate subject matter, but becomes naturally more political and concerned that the recipients may not be interested in the narrow scope of certain posts. As a result, the timeliness in receiving a response from a user's posts (feedback) may begin to diminish or disappear completely.
A British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, theorized that the maximum size of a social group in which everyone involved could maintain a mental record of all of the interpersonal relationships was 150. This is considered “Dunbar's number.” These are relationships in which an individual knows each person and how each person relates to every other person. Numbers larger than 150 generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable and cohesive group.
Dunbar's number is possibly one reason why users are more careful in posting messages to a large number of followers. Managing a large number of recipients is not easy, but the success and influence is directly proportional to the activeness of the recipients. Recognizing the behavior of the recipients may also provide insight into how to maintain their satisfaction with the content of the posts. Some of the factors that will determine the influential power of the posts and messaging may include the activeness of the recipients (feedback), the forwarding activity of the messages (sharing), the currency with which the recipients respond, etc.
Managing a large and possibly increasing number of recipients may require certain modifications to the messaging application used to share information (e.g., social networking website, blog, group messaging, etc.). For example, with short messaging service (SMS) applications, the notion of groups includes followers or recipients who are tagged into different groups. The leader is then enabled to send data messages to one of the groups without the need of sending individual messages to each person, or sending a single message to all of the followers. Groups are viewed as a way to organize many people within a single group and to obtain more followers for each group. When a group is organized, all members of the group automatically follow the data messages posted for that group, and the leader may automatically follow the individuals as well. A leader may obtain more followers by joining a group. When a group is created, it is unique and no one can replicate that specific group. Therefore, the “administrator” of that group may be viewed as the expert. Anyone who joins that group will follow the leader or administrator of the group.
Groups provide a social networking option for those leaders with a relatively small number of followers. The group situation becomes increasingly difficult to manage with a leader that already has a large number of recipients or is observing a significant increase in the number of recipients. Another concern is that the leader will not be able to divide all of the users into the correct group(s). The group strategy may be best utilized for leaders that do not have a large number of recipients.
Multiple user accounts is another strategy to allow the leader to obtain a number of updates from a subset of recipients who are controlled by the leader. There are existing applications that allow leaders to maintain multiple messaging accounts and centrally manage those accounts. For example, when the leader is replying to the recipients, there is a function (e.g., a button on the “compose” message screen) that permits the leader to switch the “sender” or leader's account. The leader can setup a “follow”-only account, and when replying to something from that account, a simple sending option may permit the reply to be sent form the leader's “real” account. None of these examples provide the success desired by the social networking leaders and recipients. Many leaders are not satisfied with having multiple user accounts or managing each individual recipient among many others. The efficiency and productivity of managing a social network requires additional measures to be enacted.