I just finished a really interesting article on network building by Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn.

In the article, Hoffman says, “Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at least two abilities.”

• The first is seeing the world from another person’s perspective.
• The second ability is being able to think about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.

I read the article the old-fashioned way, in a print copy of Fortune magazine, but here is a link to a condensed version:

I’d love to get some of y’alls thoughts and comments on his viewpoints.

After reading the article, do you think it will change the way you look at, and develop your networks?

Thanks @warrenveach. How many followers/friends/fans/connections/circles can one successfully build this kind of relationship with (not counting family members)? 

@debbielynnava

In another article, it was stated that Reid has 800 friends on fb, and another 2,500+ on LinkedIn.

However, given the connections he has to the Boards of other social networking companies, I imagine he doesn’t have many connections that aren’t “meaningful” to him and his business.

For example, I have 800+ “friends” here on SME, but why?

How many of those 800 do I really interact with beyond the “be my friend“, “thanks for being my friend” and the occasional back and forth here in the forums?

Victoria’s Secret has 14 Million fans, but that is a brand relationaship, not a personal relationship, and they don’t try to maintain communication back and forth. Its just a one-way street.

In the article, a study by psychologist Robin Dunbar wherein in the early 1990s, he  calculated that humans should be able to maintain relationships with roughly 150 people at a time. He also found that many businesses and military groups organize their people into cliques of about 150. Hence, Dunbar’s Number of 150.

Maybe that’s why facebook has a limit on the number of “friends” a person can have, because there are limits to true social interactions.

FB has relationships, LinkedIn more, Twitter more, here more, and we must now include Google+ etc.  I put a time limit on each place and somehow naturally find the people I need to interact with each time. I do not know if that is a good solution or not.
It is a huge problem.

@warrenveach I agree.  You write the book, I do not write.

Thank you for the inputs guys. I only have less than 50 friends in FaceBook. I only network with people that have impact with my business. I think I have to read the article, thank you Warren Veach

@warrenveach Thanks for starting this thoughtful discussion.
Of all my social networking mentors, I think Mari Smith is the best example of developing a community at Facebook and finding ways to engage with them directly. Mari has written a book I’ve ordered but haven’t read yet: The New Relationship Marketing: How to build a large, loyal, profitable network using the social web.
More when I’ve read the book….
Kate