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The size of social networks | Primates on Facebook | The Economist
Story on social networking, grooming v broadcasting and the Dunbar number.
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Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist who now works at Oxford University, concluded that the cognitive power of the brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. Extrapolating from the brain sizes and social networks of apes, Dr Dunbar suggested that the size of the human brain allows stable networks of about 148. Rounded to 150, this has become famous as “the Dunbar number”.
Huberman Social networks that matter: twitter under the microscope
I think my worry with this argument is that it begins (appropriately enough) by critiquing the empiricist reductionism of seeing network structure as a representation of social networks, but turns to another, equally problematic dataset. It makes an almost moralistic reading of the lack of mutualistic connections between twitter users, inferring a norm that might not actually exist.
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A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.
LRB · Colin Robinson: Diary
Analysis of publishing industry
Howard Rheingold Network Literacy Part Two: Sarnoff, Metcalfe, Reed's Laws
Rheingold 15 minute video on network literacy
Google, the new master of network effects - Print Version - International Herald Tribune
Perceptive artricle comparing Microsoft's past dominance with Google's emerging dominance through exploiting network effects
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Google, it seems, is the emerging dominant company in the Internet era, much as Microsoft was in the PC era. The study of networked businesses, market competition and antitrust law is being reconsidered in a new context, shaped by Google. Google's explanation for its large share of the Internet search market more than 60 percent is simply that it is a finely honed learning machine. Its scientists constantly improve the relevance of search results for users and the efficiency of its advertising system for advertisers and publishers.
We the Media (by Dan Gillmor)
Full of overstatement and hype, but an interesting synthesis
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This book is about journalism’s transformation from a 20th century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic. It’s a story, first, of evolutionary change. Humans have always told each other stories, and each new era of progress has led to an expansion of storytelling.
This is also a story of a modern revolution, however, because technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before.
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