I’m eternally behind in my magazine reading, so I’ve only just come upon this interesting piece by Clive Thompson from February’s WIRED. It goes a long way towards explaining a hunch I’ve long held: social networking is optimal among small to medium-sized clusters of friends or acquaintances. Grow a network large enough – marketing gurus and pr mavens take heed – to remove the perception of (real or imagined) intimacy and all that perceived value turns to noise.
“When it comes to your social network, bigger is better. Or so we’re told. The more followers and friends you have, the more awesome and important you are. That’s why you see so much oohing and aahing over people with a million Twitter followers. But lately I’ve been thinking about the downside of having a huge online audience. When you go from having a few hundred Twitter followers to ten thousand, something unexpected happens: Social networking starts to break down.”
Read the rest of the story HERE.
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