How Ant Colonies Foreshadow the Future of Facebook

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By Max Knoblauch2013-08-16 08:06:06 -0400

They call it "the anternet."

In 2012, Stanford biologist Deborah Gordon, Ph.D., discovered that the behavior of harvester ant colonies mirrors the fundamental Internet technology known as Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP.

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TCP controls the flow of information online by preventing data transmission bottlenecks and the Internet from coming to a mighty, screeching halt. Basically, when fewer people are online, information return is faster. When more people are online, it slows.

Upon observing the scavenging habits of harvester ants, Gordon found that ant colonies are controlled by the same concept. After discovering a large supply of food, more ants leave the colony. When food is scarce, the number of foragers is restricted.

In his New York Times bestseller, Breakpoint , author Jeff Stibel reflects upon the similarities between the Internet and biological networks like ant colonies to make predictions about the future of social networks like Facebook.

"When you look at the most powerful things in biology, in nature and in technology, they're always networks of things. They're not individuals," Stibel tells Mashable. "Biology is technology. It's not like technology, it is technology."

Stible, a neuroscientist and entrepreneur, knows his way around biological processes and the web. Like an ant colony, he believes, Facebook succeeds only through the combined interaction of individuals. As an ant's survival depends on its colony, a Facebook user's social experience is dependent on his friend network.

According to Stibel, all networks — natural or digital — share very similar life cycles. They begin with what's called "hypergrowth."

"In nature, all species multiply as much as resources allow," Stibel writes in Breakpoint. "The same is true of technology and business: If you don't dominate a market, you give potential upstarts an opportunity to grow and eventually compete with you."

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As Facebook strives to grow as much of a user base as possible — now with over 1.15 billion active monthly visitors — ant colonies rapidly lay eggs and consume their environment's resources. And both networks have the same motivation: keeping others from taking their place.

"In hypergrowth, you want to grow as fast as you can and let nothing stand in your way," says Stibel. "Don't charge, don't encumber, do nothing to hinder your growth. Because if you do, a competitor's going to jump in and steal it."

Harvester ant colonies grow to about 12,000 to 15,000 individuals during hypergrowth. At this point, the sheer amount of ants in the colony begins to inhibit communication. The network can no longer operate efficiently. This stage, Stibel says, is known as the breakpoint.

According to Stibel, networks face two choices during the breakpoint: keep growing or allow the breakpoint to force them down.

"The paradox is that forcing yourself to continue to grow will do more damage than allowing the breakpoint to take effect," says Stibel. "All breakpoints are elastic. The further you go beyond the breakpoint, the harder your collapse."

In response to hitting their breakpoint, ant colonies shrink down to 10,000 individuals around their fifth year. Other ants are sent off to begin new colonies in new locations. This colony shedding prevents the larger loss that result from starvation and overcrowding, if the network didn't brace for its breakpoint.

According to Stibel, failed web and social networks are just like ant colonies that didn't brace for the impact.

"The number of networks that make it to a breakpoint, out of hypergrowth, are virtually zero. Every one of these networks — Friendster, Myspace, Classmates.com — they all collapsed. They're all fractions of their former selves or they're out of business."

Halting growth and allowing users to leave seems adverse to the basic idea of social networking and Metcalfe's law: a cardinal Internet belief system which states, basically, that bigger is better.

"Bigger is better, up to a point. And that point is the breakpoint, where you hit this critical mass. Where you've consumed, effectively, all of the oxygen that can be consumed," says Stibel. "If you're Facebook, you've got all the people on the network starting to intertwine and get tangled. If you're an ant colony, you've got about 10,000 to 12,000 ants in the colony before all of a sudden they start interfering with each other. At some point, in both examples, the communication just becomes noise."

After breakpoint comes equilibrium. According to Stibel, successful networks see only a small collapse after reaching their breakpoint, through which a more optimized network with faster communication emerges.

Image: Flickr, BBMexplorer

"It seems paradoxical, but equilibrium is where the real magic happens," says Stibel. "It's where intelligent networks get smart, and where business networks start making a lot of money."

A business network in equilibrium boasts a captive audience. The network is so robust and interwoven in users' lives that they can't help but stay on. In equilibrium, the network can begin charging, promoting more advertisements or even selling users' data — if it chooses. The majority of users will likely be willing to comply in order to stay connected.

"You can do all manner of things because the benefits so far outweigh the negatives that we're willing to risk privacy to go on the web," says Stibel. "We're willing to risk someone listening to our calls to use a cellphone."

Stibel applies the breakpoint theory to the most popular social network: Facebook.

"I think Facebook is at its breakpoint in many, many markets," he says. "In the markets that they've penetrated, they have saturated. We've gotten to a point where there are too many users, there are too many connections between users, and something has to be done to cull it."

Zuckerberg, says Stibel, understands this. The growth of Facebook looks very similar to that of Gordon's ant colony.

"They started in Harvard, got about 80% penetration, then they moved to MIT. Then to just the Ivy league schools, then all colleges. It took them three years to open up to the world, each time dominating the market," he says. "Now that they've opened up to the world, they have to make a decision about whether they want to keep pushing past the breakpoint — which is dangerous as all hell — or reap the benefits of a network in equilibrium."

In equilibrium, says Stibel, Facebook would optimally offer a smaller number of connections, allowing users to more dynamically know what's going on in their closest friends' lives. Rather than be bombarded with information from hundreds of users that you don't know well, relationships would be weighted, giving users the information they want, when they want it.

Facebook should be listening to those users who say, "I don't like Facebook anymore," he adds. Those might be the ones who realize the system is breaking.

"In the United States — and I can't say this more directly — Facebook has to shrink. It has to shrink in terms of connections and in terms of users, or it will implode."

Stibel can't predict what direction Facebook will take, but he does offer up some advice for social networks of the future: Look to nature, not to the web.

"We forget that the original engineering is biology; it's evolution. And we have a lot more to learn from this biology — whether it's us, ants, termites, whatever — than we could hope to learn from the Facebooks and the Myspaces and the Yahoos of the world. Because they've only been around for what, a dozen years?"

Image: Flickr, jurvetson

Topics: biology, books, Business, Facebook, futurism, nature, Science, Social Media, World