Dunbar's Number - Popularization

Popularization

• In a 1985 paper titled "Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, & the Commons," psychologist Dennis Fox proposed the same concept as it is applied to anarchy, politics, and the tragedy of the commons.
• The number has been used in the study of Internet communities, especially MMORPGs such as Ultima Online, and social networking websites such as Facebook (Dunbar himself is doing a study on Facebook to be released in 2010) and MySpace.
• The Swedish tax authority planned to reorganize its functions in 2007 with a maximum 150 people per office, referring to Dunbar's research.
• It has also been popularized as the "monkeysphere," a neologism coined by David Wong in an article, What is the Monkeysphere?, which introduces this concept in a humorous manner.