Meaning of numbers

So apparently 3845 is the Thievery number. And I have 74 followers on Twitter and only 3 on Blogger (but surely I have more readers than that?). Then again, I have 17 contacts on Flickr, 1482 items and 13557 views. Does this bewildering array of information derive from the fact that I have intersecting online networks? And how do they intersect with offline networks? Does anyone care? And more worryingly, who’s collecting information on me? The New Scientist report on Dunbar’s number suggests that we average about 150 in our social networks and, of course, this has implications for what we do online (here). Now when you add this in with the idea that everyone on the planet is connected by six steps (six degrees of separation) it must mean that we are all pretty well connected. Somehow I don’t think so. All in all I prefer my All Consuming stats that tell me that I’m consuming 153 things, doing 1 thing and going no places!