Dunbar’s number, roughly 150, is a measurement of the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships”.

Dunbar derived the limit from studying social groupings in a variety of societies — from neolithic villages to modern office environments.

He found that people tended to self-organise in groups of around 150 because social cohesion begins to deteriorate as groups become larger.

Apparently, Dunbar’s number also holds true for social networking- you could have thousands of friends on Facebook, but the truth of the matter is: only about 150 of these would amount to “true” friendship.
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The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,

It then brings one to wonder if there really is any sense in having over 150 friends on Social Networking sites. Dunbar also claims that girls are more apt at keeping friends than guys;
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There is a big sex difference though … girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together.”

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(In case you haven't already figured it out, that's me up there)

I first learnt about Gatorpeeps from Oluniyi David Ajao’s review of Bar Camp Nigeria 2009 (which I really should have attended but for the most inevitable of reasons)- WORK! ..

Anyways, GatorPeeps is essentially a micro-blogging service that provides a platform for Afrigator users to connect with other “like-minded African users” through short updates and community interaction.

It basically works like most other micro-blogging platforms, featuring a status update box and a public timeline.

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The Status Update Box

The status update box allows you keep your friends… err ….  updated with what you are currently doing by Saying It Loud!

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Public Timeline

The public timeline (just below the status update box) allows you view your friends updates, and has a really remarkable “Friends Blogposts” feature which allows you to toggle between your friend’s peeps and their latest blog posts so you can actually keep track of what they’re blogging about.

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It doesn’t end there

Gatorpeeps offers an array of features which make it safer to play with
According to the Afrigator blog, Gatorpeeps would be extended to an SMS-based mobile offering to cater for users who wish to “use their mobile phone as their primary device”.

If only that were all.

They’ve also added some really, really, REALLY cool tools to the mix, my favourite of course being the Post it to Twitter tool which essentially allows you to dual-post to Gatorpeeps and Twitter via a really simple setup process.

HEY! There’s more.

Gatorpeeps is going to be developed at a very fast rate. We have lots of plans for where we want to take it and we’ll be moving like a Boeing to get there. Some of our future development includes:

• Mobile web front-end
• Mobile apps for Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, iPhone and Android
• SMS integration
• Extending Community functionality
• Smarter ways to share links & photos via Gatorpeeps
• Plugins & Widgets for all environments
• Closer integration with Afrigator
• API Access (oh wait, that’s done)
• API Documentation

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Man I’ve really got to hand it to Justin, Stii, and the rest of the gang.
Gatorpeeps really is the bomb.

And you there! Africa’s talking, Are you? Hit us with a couple of comments and let us know ok?

Don’t forget to follow the D-Tech Blog on Twitter, and yeah Peep me up a line or two. You’d most likely be hitting me up on Twitter as well. Sweeeet !!!!

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