Inaki Berenguer, MBA '09

Real world networks: every 7 years we replace 48% of our friends with new ones

"Over the course of 7 years, we replace 48% of our friends with new ones … The total never changes: there's only so much room for new people in your life", Gerald Mollenhorst, 2009

The survey contained questions such as: Who do you talk with, regarding personal issues? Who helps you with DIY in your home? Who do you pop by to see? Where did you get to know that person? And where do you meet that person now?

You may have more Facebook friends as the years go by, but when it comes to your close friends, you lose about half and replace them with new ones after 7 years. Managing relations on a large scale is impossible. Mollenhorst also established that networks were not formed based on personal choices alone. Our friend choices are limited by the opportunities to meet. 

"Facebook now host 4% of all the photographs ever taken. EVER"

The exact numbers of this analysis might not be correct but the conclusions are directionally right and impressive!

Facebook now host 4% of all the photographs ever taken. EVER. That equates to an estimated 140 billion photos of the 3.5 trillion thought to have been taken since Joseph Nicéphore Niépce first introduced the image capturing device in 1826. Incredibly, 70 billion of those photos were uploaded this year alone, showing just how quickly the rise of smartphones and ever-more-affordable digital cameras are increasing our photo-sharing habits.  In fact, 10% of all the photos we have, were taken in the past 12 months.

With 750 million+ active Facebook users, many of those uploading hundreds of photos on a regular basis, the collection is set to grow exponentially in the coming years.

1000Memories

"The power of small batches", Eric Ries

In the book Lean Thinking, James Womack and Daniel Jones recount a story of stuffing newsletters into envelopes with the assistance of one of the author’s two young children. Every envelope had to be addressed, stamped, filled with a letter, and sealed. The daughters, age six and nine, knew how they should go about completing the project: “Daddy, first you should fold all of the newsletters. Then you should attach the seal. Then you should put on the stamps.” Their father wanted to do it the counterintuitive way: complete each envelope one at a time. They told him “that wouldn’t be efficient!” So he and his daughters each took half the envelopes and competed to see who would finish first.

The father won the race, and not just because he is an adult. The one envelope at a time approach is a faster way of getting the job done even though it seems inefficient (Because our intuition doesn’t take into account the extra time required to sort, stack, and move around the large piles of half- complete envelopes when it’s done the other way.)

But even if the amount of time that each process took was exactly the same, the small batch production approach still would be superior, and for even more counterintuitive reasons. For example, imagine that the letters didn’t fit in the envelopes. With the large- batch approach, we wouldn’t find that out until nearly the end. With small batches, we’d know almost immediately.

All these issues are visible in a process as simple as stuffing envelopes, but they are of real and much greater consequence in the work of every company, large or small. What if it turns out that the customers have decided they don’t want the product? Which process would allow a company to find this out sooner?

What if it turns out that the customer doesn’t want the product we’re building? Although this is never good news for an entrepreneur, finding out sooner is much better than finding out later. Working in small batches ensures that a startup can minimize the expenditure of time, money, and effort that ultimately turns out to have been wasted.

Eric Ries, The Power of Small Batches