Quality over quantity-Relationships vs Contacts
We’ve all heard it from parents and teachers over the years: “It’s quality, not quantity, that matters.” Yet somehow, in the age of social media, that wisdom has been cast aside. Today, the metric is numbers, followers, likes, etc. Social platforms are engineered for scale, not substance. And then wonder when we feel overwhelmed, distracted, and fuzzy.
Take LinkedIn, for example. According to Ecosia, the average user has around 1,300 connections. I checked my own stats—at 1,200, I’m pretty much right on the mark.
But what does that actually mean for me?
1-In theory, more connections mean more amplification. Post a comment and it reaches your first-degree network, then the algorithm pushes it further. Validation comes in the form of likes and comments.
2- It’s great and affordable marketing. That’s how you push a brand or a product out into the world.
3- But on LinkedIn, a connection is just a name, a title, and a company. No context. No history. No sense of who they really are or why they matter to you. They’re just a line on a screen. And that’s what we call a ‘connection’? It feels hollow.
4- We have conflated between ‘contacts’ and ‘relationships’—and they are not the same thing.
So I ran an experiment. I exported my LinkedIn connections into ‘Kuerate (
and reviewed them using a simple framework:
- Do I actually ‘know’ this person? Have we met, engaged, or built any rapport? - Does this connection impact my work or life—today or in the future? - What would change if I removed them from my network?
You can probably guess where this led. Two powerful principles came into play:
a). The Pareto Principle – 20% of my connections were meaningful. I could realistically reduce my network by 80% and land at under 200 meaningful contacts.
b). Dunbar’s Number – Anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggests that ~150 relationships is about our cognitive limit for genuine connection. Fascinating stuff.
That was my aha moment: focus on quality, not quantity.
And that’s when I fully embraced Kuerate. Importing my LinkedIn contacts turned into one of the most rewarding exercises I’ve done. Suddenly, I could add context to every person—classify them (colleague, prospect, friend), add notes, rank by priority, and organize into lists. My contacts finally had meaning. I could visualize my network, reconnect with long-forgotten people, and actually nurture relationships again.
Liberating. Fruitful. And long overdue.
Here’s to the core 20%. Love it.
This shift has also changed the content I share. On LinkedIn, my message is broader, more professional. On Kuerate, it’s deeper, more personal—and that’s exactly how it should be