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We see it all the time, and now it heads to Twitter : “There’s Too Many People Here Syndrome”.

You know the place, that little bar that was once hip, and then everyone found out about it, it got busy, all the early people weren’t recognised as “being there first”, so they decided it wasn’t very good anymore. And it happens all the time on the net – Usenet groups, IRC channels, forums. And now Social Media Snobs are leaving Twitter in numbers as they believe popularity and credibility are mutually exclusive, and even if they can prove they were “here before you” it doesn’t change the fact that something that was once “their special thing” is now part of the mainstream.

But allow me to offer a counterpoint: what if it’s not snobbery? There have been significant studies in the area – the Dunbar Number, made popular by Gladwell’s Tipping Point, states than around 150 contacts is as many stable personal relationships our brains can manage. So it could be argued that as the number of people visiting somewhere increases, the chance for our brains to process all these people is reduced.

I’d love to know your thoughts – snobbery or science? And could this diagram be bettered in anyway?

(With credit to Diesel Sweeties for the original “Music snobs” idea, go buy his stuff!)