Some problems are just hard. No one blames calculators for the difficulty of calculus. Classifying relationships is something we don't normally do consciously.

Some problems are just hard. No one blames calculators for the difficulty of calculus. Classifying relationships is something we don't normally do consciously. People use email and Facebook messages for the small groups you've mentioned. Attempting to shoehorn that use case into the news feed and the post workflow would complicate things. Most things that people share outside of work don't need to be limited to few people. Cringely is basically saying, "I wish Facebook solved this problem that I have, but few of its other users probably have as well." It makes no sense.