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I agree with your reference to the 'Real Life Social Network', and I'd also point out that keeping your groups separate is a hard problem to solve. To execute,

I agree with your reference to the 'Real Life Social Network', and I'd also point out that keeping your groups separate is a hard problem to solve. To execute, you have to have something that's easy, simple to use, opaque when you want it to be (and vice versa), and you have to model the way your groups see each other (or can they? Should they?). I'm very interested to see who finally manages to find the solution to that (and what that solution might possibly look like.)

stuntgoat 16y ago
What about a tab for each Path share group indicating which friends you share photos with? If you want to share photos with "work: medium-good friends" you can and insure that the "work: ok friends" or "family: mom's side" don't get the same post. I feel like the hard problem is not to keep groups separate, but to re-factor existing infrastructure to support separation and making it 'easy' for users.
- goatforce5 16y ago
  And there's almost certainly content that you would want to share with multiple groups, but you'd then not want the feedback/comments from those individual groups to be visible across all groups.
- Timothee 16y ago
  I feel the hardest part is making it easy for users. Facebook has offered lists and groups for a long time, and it's fairly easy to post something to just a specific list. However, I found that the difficult part is the housekeeping of these different groups. Even if you take the time to create lists for your different social groups, these groups will evolve over time, because of new friendships, fights or whatever; which means that you need to spend time maintaining who belongs to what group. That will generally not happen. The other solution is to rely on intelligent systems that manage your groups (Facebook could do that kind of things based on who interacts with whom, and what kind of subjects, etc.) or who sees what (Facebook already kind of does that from the point of view of showing you what you will find interesting, not what other can or not see at all) but relying completely on systems like that is difficult and scary, and will still hinder sharing stuff blindly.
  - austinchang 16y ago
    things starting/stopping - groups, interests, friends is actually a good thing and what keeps things interesting. things coming and going should be a feature not a flaw of the way people interact online...
cabalamat 16y ago
LiveJournal solved all these problems years ago (at least, I found it easy to use).
- extension 16y ago
  That worked because social computing was still on the fringe and its relatively small user base only intersected one of our social spheres. If our parents had had livejournals, we would have had this problem.

stuntgoat 16y ago

What about a tab for each Path share group indicating which friends you share photos with? If you want to share photos with "work: medium-good friends" you can and insure that the "work: ok friends" or "family: mom's side" don't get the same post. I feel like the hard problem is not to keep groups separate, but to re-factor existing infrastructure to support separation and making it 'easy' for users.

goatforce5 16y ago
And there's almost certainly content that you would want to share with multiple groups, but you'd then not want the feedback/comments from those individual groups to be visible across all groups.
Timothee 16y ago
I feel the hardest part is making it easy for users. Facebook has offered lists and groups for a long time, and it's fairly easy to post something to just a specific list. However, I found that the difficult part is the housekeeping of these different groups. Even if you take the time to create lists for your different social groups, these groups will evolve over time, because of new friendships, fights or whatever; which means that you need to spend time maintaining who belongs to what group. That will generally not happen. The other solution is to rely on intelligent systems that manage your groups (Facebook could do that kind of things based on who interacts with whom, and what kind of subjects, etc.) or who sees what (Facebook already kind of does that from the point of view of showing you what you will find interesting, not what other can or not see at all) but relying completely on systems like that is difficult and scary, and will still hinder sharing stuff blindly.
- austinchang 16y ago
  things starting/stopping - groups, interests, friends is actually a good thing and what keeps things interesting. things coming and going should be a feature not a flaw of the way people interact online...

cabalamat 16y ago

LiveJournal solved all these problems years ago (at least, I found it easy to use).

extension 16y ago
That worked because social computing was still on the fringe and its relatively small user base only intersected one of our social spheres. If our parents had had livejournals, we would have had this problem.