... on facebook that is. And not you of course. Obviously you are really important to me. It's the other people who aren't.
I talked about this a while ago, and Meg is also talking about how Facebook needs to add relevance to the contact list..
I'm cross posting my comment on Meg's site here because I think my solution is rather nifty, and the comment I left at Meg's was pretty much blog length.
I agree with Meg, although I see it less as a venn diagram and more as a an onion. I should have drawn diagrams too. Basically I see friends ranking outwards from really important to me, to vaguely important to basically archived.
Whilst your groups idea gets the end result, I don't think it would work. People on FB don't really treat groups that way, and it involves too much work, both for the person settings things up, as well as for the other people. It also breaks down the venn diagrams of of overlapping connections, which I think is a critical part of how facebook/linkedin etc work.
What you really need is a simple, or near automated way to do this with minimal effort. Easier than the "how do I know this person" they currently have, which whilst interesting has very little value, and is mostly wrong because hard wired tick boxes cannot account for enough situations.
What I would see as a solution (which admittedly only came to me when reading your blog) is an importance bar. On the left site is "really important people" (wives, close friends, etc) and on the right side is "people I really can't be bothered with, more of a reference if I need it" (that guy I knew at school, my now married ex, etc)
Every person then needs two variables. A placement and a modifier. The placement is where you stick them on the bar. The modifier is a 1 or 2 step shift up or down the bar based on how you communicate with them.
Then when your friend a person, it gets shown below on this bar. A couple of key friends could appear on the bar as reference points. You then slide this person up or down the bar to the point where their relevance to you is. Really quick and easy and not much effort to set up.
Then in setting you can control how much information about you is revealed based on the bar position. You can also give more or less control to facebook to modify people's position automatically based on how much you communicate with them, and poke them, and view their profile etc. Information delivered to you about other people is obviously prioritised towards their importance on the bar.
I think this fairly accurately reflects how we view people in life. I think it's very little effort to do, to deliver context and simplifying things, as well as being able to dynamically change things based on activity. It also retains and holds interconnection information between contacts as well as adding too it.
I now have over 250 contacts in FB. Way more than I can manage. I suspect most people have this problem. If Facebook doesn't improve this aspect of their platform, they will start suffering from it. If they aren't already.
1. Rob
My only problem with this is that I can’t really see a purpose for detailed friend levels in Facebook yet. Even friend groups aren’t used for anything, really. It’s just a funny little label to have under their name on your contact list.
Maybe if you could send messages or files to groups of friends, like in Pownce, but Facebook isn’t really used for that right now. And I suppose that has more to do with groups than importance anyway.
Security settings I could see, but is there really a need for anything beyond Limited/Unlimited access right now? I guess this would be handy for filtering the updates you receive from friends, though.
I think they really need to look at where they want Facebook to go. It started as something for university friends to stay in touch with, but now it’s growing into a bit of a mess if you ask me.
2. Adrian
Rob with 250+ in my facebook list I want to control the volume of information I’m getting. So on the one end of the scale I really just want people to sit there in my list and know I can go find them if I want to, more of a pull than a push.
On the other end are the people who I want to know what;s going with and what updates from.
Right now they all have the same value and the ones that interest me are being lost in the ones that don’t.
3. snowgoon.myopenid.com
This is why I haven’t really ‘gotten into’ Facebook, I just can’t see the long term point.
LinkedIn is slightly different insomuch as it’s aimed at my working colleagues.
And yay, comments now working.
4. Crystal Van Wieren
Have you thought about just using Facebook, as many people do, as a way of having the ability to “find them if you want to” rather than as a way to stay up-to-date on a few people’s goings on? Wouldn’t a better way to achieve that particular goal be to subscribe to their blogs’ RSS feeds and/or through Twitter, something you so often use? Like I was saying yesterday, it isn’t like I go to your Facebook to find out what is going on in your life; I come here instead.
5. Adrian
Although more people now FB than Twitter or blog.
Also I use FB as a management tool for organising things.
FB is a lot of different things to different people which makes it’s proposition quite tough, but it’s still about connections, and it needs to improve this aspect of it’s platform. Far more important than superpoke …
6. Dragon
Sliders == bad bad bad.
Also, if FB doesn’t do what you want it do then perhaps it’s not the problem. It’s like buying a high performance race car then complaining that you can’t go offroad with it.
7. Adrian
What’s wrong with sliders?
I think FB never even considered it.
It’s like buying a normal car, and finding out that their are so many normal cars the roads are wrecked and you need a 4x4 just to drive on the normal road.
8. Destructor
Doesn’t the capability you are talking about already exist? If you don’t want to get updates about certain people, there’s already an option to exclude them from the updates page. If you don’t want to get updates on certain aspects of the people you haven’t filtered, there are already sliders that reduce certain updates. if you don’t want certain people to see all your info, there’s already a ‘limited profile’ option where YOU determine what they see. In other words: All the limits are already in place. You just want a system to qualify your friends along the intimacy bar because you already do that in your head. Can’t it just stay there, in your head?
9. Adrian
No the functionality doesn’t exist.
You can reduce the updates you get on aspects for everyone. So you can say “don’t show me wall posts”. But I want wall posts. Just I want to make sure I don’t miss your wall posts because I am seeing to many of other peoples.
You can limit people from seeing your profile, but that doesn’t help me.
The value of a social network is about the value between the connections. Read Meg’s post. The problem is that FB is giving the same value to “best mate” as to “bloke I knew at school, sorta”. This isn’t how things are in reality and is the noise is overloading the signal.
10. Destructor
If you don’t want to see wall posts from the bloke you knew at school, stick him on your filter list. You’re overcomplicating a very simple issue.
11. Adrian
Sticking him in my filter list, filters HIM from seeing my profile not ME from seeing his.
AFAICT (As Far As I can Tell)
12. The B
No, destructor is right. On the same bit where you decide how much of different kinds of info to get, you can also choose up to 20 friends who you want to hear more about and 20 to not hear about. Not quite what you’re after but might go some way to help?
I do find the options like that on Facebook very hard to find though, and totally unintuitive.
I actually do want what you’ve said you don’t - the ability to have more than one privacy level. I’d like my really close friends to be able to see everything including my contact information (then I can put my address and phone number etc so they can find it if they need it, lose their mobile or whatever). There is another category of people, like friends of friends who I’ve met once or twice, who I don’t want to give that to but I don’t mind them seeing my status or writing on my wall. Then there is at least one other category, like the couple of 17 year olds who I know and like and don’t want to reject, but don’t want them to see my wall or status.
13. Destructor
It’s wierd, last night I went to a lecture by Microsoft’s user experience evangelist, who said that 90% of the features asked for by users is stuff that had already been implemented- people just don’t look for it.
B, there is an option to do what you speak of. Click the ‘privacy’ button in the top right corner and you can make selected people see your ‘limited’ profile. You define what this limited profile consists of. The third option is called reject friend.
Adrian, your feature can be found in the preferences. Here is a screenshot of my settings- see how I’ve ‘tiered’ my friends as ‘special’, normal (not on either list), and ‘not so special’. See how it hurts the people I’ve defined as not so special? Or even normal? Isn’t that really all you’re after? The tiering you otherwise do in your head anyway? This is a perfectly workable system. You want two variables per person? The majority of facebook just doesn’t care enough to work that system. It’s pointless overcomplication- which is one of the defining qualities of bad design.
14. Destructor
Interesting on-topic essay.
15. Adrian
Typical Microsoft to blame bad user interface design on the users. If some thing is not intuitive or doesn’t work with the way people work, or people don’t know it exists then the problem is more with the design than the users.
For example, I spent 20 mins looking for that window you have screen shotted. I’ve seen the top half before. Still can’t find it
[Update] Found it. Still it wasn’t overly obvious with at least three sets of locations this could be under and not consolidated under any.
Anyway, that still is not really functionality designed around how people interact with people. Firstly it only gives me three levels, where there should be more or less levels dynamically created by the computer based on some basic tranches. Secondly it only lets me put 30 people into each level. What if I want 10 friends in the top level and everyone else in the bottom level? After you exceed about 60 people this limit is pointless.
It also doesn’t work the way people think. So on this screen I have to think of the names of the people I want more or less information from? This is wrong. When I add friends is when I want to initialise this. When I get too many updates from people I want to alter this. When I don’t get enough updates from someone but keep checking their profile I should be able to flick something to alter this.
Social networks are all about the value of the connection. Or they need to be if they are to last. They are about the thickness and direction of the line connecting everyone. So with you I want a thick two way line. With my first girlfriend I want a thin one way line.
What facebook gives to determine the metadata about the connection is “network” and “how do I know this person”. Both vaugely interesting but not all that relevant and not very valuable. That I know you randomly and Craig through school, says very little about my connection to you. That I’m in the London network along with a bazzilion other people says nothing.
The network features are too big. I don’t care about the baziilion other people, I care about my networks. My networks are “close friends” “work connections” “friends of friends” etc. But FB doesn’t enable anything around this, dynamically or otherwise.
Social interactive is about the relevance present in the connections between people. And FB does very little around this. All the data is very tangential. In my very humble opinion it’s getting this wrong. LinkedIN being more focused gets this more right, and even then it could do more.
16. The B
Um Destructor - No it doesn’t. Did you not see where I explained that there were at LEAST 3 categories I didn’t want to reject? By more than one privacy level I meant that I knew there was an “open all areas” default and then one privacy setting. I want lots more.
The other thing that annoys me? When friends message me through Facebook. I already HAVE email. I don’t want to check two accounts, so Facebook emails me when I have mail (and when I get a friend request, that’s the only options I have turned on for letting me know about). So I have to log into my mail, click onto the message, click through to Facebook, log into Facebook…
I’m BORED already.
17. Registered User
Actually I like the facebook messages email thing.
It keeps random crap our of my email email box, and reduces my email load.
18. Destructor
LinkedIN being more focused gets this more right, and even then it could do more.
I think this is an important point. LinkedIN does what it does (a networking site purely for business contacts) very well. Facebook was designed purely for students (students in America, no less) to connect with one another. Just because it’s been co-opted by the masses doesn’t create some kind of obligation on the part of the creators to make it all things to all people. It does what it was designed to do very well. You want it to change to suit your purposes so it can be your site for friends and your site for business contacts. Use linkedIN for your business contacts, and let Facebook just be for your friends. I can’t believe I just wrote that. Belly-button, meet snake-eating-itself. This discussion alone is more effort than the issue warrants, let alone implementing triplicate privacy levels.
19. Adrian
Just because it’s been co-opted by the masses doesn’t create some kind of obligation on the part of the creators to make it all things to all people.
Actually it does. FB is being evaluated at ridiculous amounts of money (as high as $6 billion dollars in some cases). This is because it’s been co-opted by the masses.
If the owners/creators, don’t want the money, sure they don’t have to do anything. But if they do, they have to ensure the longevity of their platform/network/system. And to do this, it becomes less of a “thing we did a uni” and more of “we need to make sure the needs of our users are taken care of”.
Many people are using FB as a business tool (as much or even more than LinkedIn in some cases). Ignoring these users is fine, but then the valuation of FB as a company drops, and from what I’ve seen, the creators and VC’s behind FB want as much money as they can get out of this.
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to discuss FB both in business terms, as well as the social anthropology of it. I’m a web experience and usability guy, I think part of what I do is look at other sites and discuss the experience and usability of it.
The same way that you can listen to an new Album or you can dissect it. If you are a musician and you dissect it, and analyse it and get something out of that, just because other people take it purely as a cd to spin doesn’t change anything and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at it on a deeper level.
20. The B
ie, if you don’t want to talk about it, Destructor, why are you? Let us snake belly button (what?!) people alone and stop telling us off.
What are blogs FOR, anyway.
21. NakedBiff
Would ‘closeness’ be better than ‘importance’?
~biff~
22. Adrian
Semantics.
A shorter way of saying “what gives the link between us relevance”. For me it’s importantness. For you it’s closeness. For someone else it’s sexyness.