How did Alice know that this post was coming days before I even knew I was going to write it?

My interest lately has been the human social condition - how humans organize themselves in groups as well as how the human mind influences the social networks we create.

On the macrosocial level, humans have a tendency to form groups of 150 people. This is well-outlined in this paper entitled co-evolution of neocortext size, group size, and language in humans. If you want to save yourself the trouble of reading it, the important points is that there is a strong case for the size of the neocortex affecting how big our natural social groups tend to be. Dunbar used some regression tests against apes, chimps, and humans and found that humans have an ideal group size of 148.4 individuals (or 150). This is to say that once a group reaches greater than 148.4, things tend to start breaking down; in essence the huge number of social networks that must be maintained by the group is too burdensome for each individual to handle. Once you get larger than 150, then you have to create a clear hiearchy and start introducing formalities. Under 150, you can keep things impersonal and use direct contact between individuals to get things done.

It's no surprise that effective armies are structured around the platoons (30-40 soldiers), which are then structured into companies (which usually have around 3-6 platoons).

On the microlevel, each individual human mind has an innate limitation of seven numbers. Look at phone numbers - they are traditionally seven numbers. The bulk of humans cannot deal with remembering more than seven things at once. This is not to say our lives are defined by the number seven, but the simple case of the matter is that the human mind has a lot of limitations. At any given time, I wouldn't say I have more than 7 close acquaintances at once (these friends change with time, but I don't usually have more than 7 to deal with at once).

Personally, I always notice how poker games always liven up when it gets down to about 6 or 7 people; things are much different when you're in a larger group.

When classifying human social connections, you can break things down to "strong ties" (close friends, family) and "weak ties" (basically boils down to acquaintances). Granovetter wrote a supposedly groundbreaking paper about this topic (. S. Granovetter: The strength of weak ties : A network theory revisited. In Sociological Theory (1), 1983) which I haven't read, but I've read excerpts online and I've read papers in which it's been cited. What's amazing is that as it turns out, weak ties are more important in developing yourself as a human in a social setting. Strong ties tend to be overly supportive of yourself (blinded, in a sense) ... and strong ties tend to be people whose interests you share.

How does this apply to your life? Well, as it turns out, weak ties are way more important in job hunting than strong ties. Makes sense! If you hang out with the same group of people with the same network ties as you, you'll saturate those network ties trying to get a job. But tap into a social network in which you're not really associated with and you immediately have more options.

The beauty of the Internet is that self-publishing has become cheap (almost free). This means that a lot of those "weak ties" are much easier to develop. Even better, there needs to be almost no reciprocation among these weak ties - a recruiter could be reading this right now (I doubt it, but you get the point). The Internet makes social networking incredibly cheap and efficient.

Taking this one step further, because building these ties are now so cheap, there is a blurring among personal/business ties. This journal is a key example. Am I attempting to connect to individuals I find interesting on a personal level or am I using this partially as an inexpensive PR tool? Sadly, the answer to both questions is "yes." Read almost any technnical blog, and you'll see it's a combination. Weak ties are no longer limited just to one purpose - they are serving multiple purposes.

So how does this fit in with the future of journaling? (You've got to know that I'm going to eventually write about Tabulas.) Well, if the human mind is limited (Miller's Magical 7) and if we're constantly trying to build more weak ties, it seems that social networking tools should also be striving to help you develop and maintain those weak ties much more effectively.

This is why I think sites like Facebook and Friendster were such huge hits. Their ideas were not particularly innovative, but it was the tools that they introduced to their members that were important. Friendster and Facebook allow you to not only develop weak ties more effectively, but maintain them. It's hard for me to imagine all the people I've met throughout high school, but I load up FaceBook, and voila! Here they are! And even people I kind of knew in college. Right now, you can't do much except just view them and read their profiles, but this is only the beginning. In the future, these connections will be worth a lot to you (want to reconnect with your old buddies? need to find a job in a certain new industr? need to find a place to live in a new city? look at your weak ties!)

I see the next step for blogging tools is not only for publication, but management of weak ties. A combination of Friendster/Facebook with the power of personal publishing will be an extremely effective tool.

I remember when I first introduced the birthday reminder feature into Tabulas. It has saved my butt so many times - many people don't care that you don't personally remember birthdays - they just want the affection of weak ties (everyone wants to think they have lots of friends, and remembering the birthday is a great test of that friendship). The birthday, as you get older, is less about your actual birthdate, but a test of who you believe to be your friends.

So sites like Tabulas will have to evolve by creating APIs that will let the users store information like address books, birthdates, contacts, etc. that will not only be accessible through their websites, but also through mobile handsets and through whatever future applications the user uses. People want reminders about their lives, because real life nowadays is so hectic that it's quite hard to remember every little thing we have to do.

Hope this made sense.