Modern society's increasing dependency on online tools for both work and
recreation opens up unique opportunities for the study of social interactions.
A large survey of online exchanges or conversations on Twitter, collected
across six months involving 1.7 million individuals is presented here. We test
the theoretical cognitive limit on the number of stable social relationships
known as Dunbar's number. We find that users can entertain a maximum of 100-200
stable relationships in support for Dunbar's prediction. The "economy of
attention" is limited in the online world by cognitive and biological
constraints as predicted by Dunbar's theory. Inspired by this empirical
evidence we propose a simple dynamical mechanism, based on finite priority
queuing and time resources, that reproduces the observed social behavior.
%0 Journal Article
%1 Goncalves2011Modeling
%A Goncalves, Bruno
%A Perra, Nicola
%A Vespignani, Alessandro
%D 2011
%E Perc, Matjaz
%J PLoS ONE
%K twitter social-networks information-diffusion
%N 8
%P e22656+
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0022656
%T Modeling Users' Activity on Twitter Networks: Validation of Dunbar's Number
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022656
%V 6
%X Modern society's increasing dependency on online tools for both work and
recreation opens up unique opportunities for the study of social interactions.
A large survey of online exchanges or conversations on Twitter, collected
across six months involving 1.7 million individuals is presented here. We test
the theoretical cognitive limit on the number of stable social relationships
known as Dunbar's number. We find that users can entertain a maximum of 100-200
stable relationships in support for Dunbar's prediction. The "economy of
attention" is limited in the online world by cognitive and biological
constraints as predicted by Dunbar's theory. Inspired by this empirical
evidence we propose a simple dynamical mechanism, based on finite priority
queuing and time resources, that reproduces the observed social behavior.
@article{Goncalves2011Modeling,
abstract = {{Modern society's increasing dependency on online tools for both work and
recreation opens up unique opportunities for the study of social interactions.
A large survey of online exchanges or conversations on Twitter, collected
across six months involving 1.7 million individuals is presented here. We test
the theoretical cognitive limit on the number of stable social relationships
known as Dunbar's number. We find that users can entertain a maximum of 100-200
stable relationships in support for Dunbar's prediction. The "economy of
attention" is limited in the online world by cognitive and biological
constraints as predicted by Dunbar's theory. Inspired by this empirical
evidence we propose a simple dynamical mechanism, based on finite priority
queuing and time resources, that reproduces the observed social behavior.}},
added-at = {2019-06-10T14:53:09.000+0200},
archiveprefix = {arXiv},
author = {Gon\c{c}alves, Bruno and Perra, Nicola and Vespignani, Alessandro},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/24e3d1864abbf2884db53e181492af162/nonancourt},
citeulike-article-id = {9343235},
citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022656},
citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5170},
citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.5170},
day = 3,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0022656},
editor = {Perc, Matjaz},
eprint = {1105.5170},
interhash = {f338d499980866f1fbcc9a5b41a73f51},
intrahash = {4e3d1864abbf2884db53e181492af162},
issn = {1932-6203},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
keywords = {twitter social-networks information-diffusion},
month = aug,
number = 8,
pages = {e22656+},
posted-at = {2011-05-27 09:38:00},
priority = {2},
timestamp = {2019-07-31T12:36:13.000+0200},
title = {{Modeling Users' Activity on Twitter Networks: Validation of Dunbar's Number}},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022656},
volume = 6,
year = 2011
}