An old co-worker just sent me this awesome post by Mark Hendrickson about Facebook, and how the character of the network is inherently flawed due to it’s architecture. One of the bits that was particularly well put was something I’ve been noticing for some time:
…friends come and go in real life; but on Facebook, they usually just come. Friend lists tend to get bloated over time because users have a harder time defriending each other virtually than in real life. And even if they are going to defriend each other virtually, it has to be a deliberative effort, unlike in real-life when you just stop seeing certain people.
Your circle of friends is a spotlight on a crowd, that’s constantly shifting and refocusing. Facebook doesn’t reflect these social shifts as naturally as it should. The resulting problem exemplified by the news feed – a feature that assumes that you have an equal amount of interest in all your “friends” at all times. Hendrickson lays it down:
…Facebook makes me reluctant to publish there, because I don’t feel as though my friends have indicated an interest to see my constant updates. The problem I have as a content consumer is just the flip-side: when I load up Facebook, I see content produced by people who I don’t particularly want to hear about or from.
In general, I’ve had little patience for those who are disgusted or frustrated with the world of status updates. If you don’t care about what someone had for lunch, don’t listen. Turn off their updates. De-friend them. But on the other hand, I shouldn’t have to do that. Even though they’re not all my “best” friends, I still like to keep a list of everyone I know in case I’m bored. As the largest and most dominant social network, Facebook needs to present a system capable of the type of plasticity that’s really happening in people’s lives.
What should Facebook do?
The answer I hope to see could result from some smart integration with mobile phones. My cell phone has all the data necessary to improve the value of my Facebook network. It knows who I talk to most often, it knows who I talk with for a lengthy time, it knows my “favorites” list, it knows where I live, and it knows the places I frequent. More importantly, it can assemble a model of each of these things as they relate to one another over time. It’s closer than any other device is to my actual social life, and it should inform my otherwise dumb list of Facebook friends. Why not let this data inform the way Facebook presents itself to me?
From there, lots of interesting things could happen. The Facebook homepage might actually present meaningful information to me. There could be really smart “suggested” events that were activities that I might realistically consider. Advertisers could get in the mix, and offer group discounts to some friends that might actually get together and act on a good deal. Friend suggestions could be MUCH more meaningful – and could more effectively diversify my circle of contacts.
Most important to me is that a clearer picture of ourselves would start to emerge online, in a way that we could see it, and start to learn from it.
Unfortunately, doesn’t look like you can build something like this with the iPhone, but perhaps Android phones can do it. Either way, this type of smart integration is definitely on the horizon, and it’ll be interesting to see how Facebook and other networks approach it.
