This stuff is fascinating. Christopher Allen talks about The Dunbar Number (" a measure of the cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom a person can maintain stable relationships") and it's implications for social software and online games. But which also must have all sorts of implictions for business structure and for brands - as they try to maintain relationships with people. I really like the idea of brands thinking about grooming. Especially worth listening to if you're in a company of about 13 people.
There was something interesting I once came across (though can't remember where) called the Anthropologist's Rule. This said we have the mental capacity to cope with social groupings of 150 AT MOST. And that this was only 6 more than Neanderthal man (how they know that I have no idea!) - i.e. after 30,000 years of evolution, our ability to cope with choice has increased by only 4%.
And I think that Winston Fletcher, in his book Advertising Advertising, quoted some figure about people only having around 200 brands they have a real relationship with at anyone time.
Which is spookily similar.
Posted by: Jon Howard | September 08, 2006 at 04:25 PM