[philk]

FB also seems to get less useful over time as you add more people.

Initially, when you have a few people you know really well and get on with, you can post quite freely knowing that it's unlikely to come back and bite you.

Later, as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more measured and it winds up feeling like you're running some sort of discount PR agency.

[frazerb]

This is an interesting departure from Metcalfe's Law [ the value of the network is proportionate to the square of the number of nodes in the network ].

Perhaps Metcalfe's Law applies up to a certain size, and then tails off thereafter.

There is a limit on the number of people that us humans can reasonably be expected to have friendships with. I have a feeling that it is substantially smaller than the number of 'friends' that facebook attracts.

[skord]

Hardly a departure, the value is substantial for all those but the user.

The friendship limit you speak of has been hypothesized by an anthropologist (Robin Dunbar) as being in direct correlation to neocortex size. More recently, it's been called "the monkeysphere".

[philk]

For FB I suspect that the ideal would be a network with lots of nodes but few connections; I want to be able to find my friends but I don't want them to be connected to so many that they have to sanitize their posts/thoughts.

[prodigal_erik]

I sanitize my posts (and I post very little), and I would no matter how few connections I had. Given their history of privacy flaws, it's not what my friends see that I worry about.

[yason]

as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more measured

One can't live like this for too long, you have to be yourself instead of a filtered, cleaned-up politically correct version of yourself.

[roedog]

Right, and if I'm not comfortable with doing so on facebook, then I'll go be myself elsewhere.