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I agree 100% with your statements except that I think Facebook does understand this. After all, isn't this exactly what the Lists/Groups feature does (albeit, u

by bjtitus 16y ago

I agree 100% with your statements except that I think Facebook does understand this. After all, isn't this exactly what the Lists/Groups feature does (albeit, un-intuitively)? I believe that Facebook knows this is a concern and this is why they relaunched the Groups feature recently. It's a hard problem to solve from a UX perspective. Most normal users would be confused by segregating things out even if there was an easy UI solution for creating/publishing to these groups. Look to their recent acquisition of Beluga to get a sense of where this is going. They are obviously interested in moving into the group messaging space. Lets not fool ourselves, though. Facebook has some vested interest in making things more public so that advertisers and media outlets can use them without issue.

joebadmo 16y ago
There's an inherent tension between people's desire for granular control and their resistance to exercising that control, ie I want robust lists, but I don't want to have to manage them. I kind of feel like once list/group data is portable between services/networks, it won't be as big of a problem, since you'd only have to do it once, and management after that can be at the time of contact creation/connection. I also think using the physical place metaphors more explicitly could be interesting. Like you could make a "bar" place, where your bar friends gather. Functionally I suppose it would be identical to Facebook groups. What I'm really hoping for, though is that in the future once identity data is portable, the existing social networks will be more akin to places. Facebook will be the place for shallow, bland, regulated, cursory interaction. Twitter will be the place for shouting loud and pithy aphorisms in public. You could create private places for different purposes as the needs arise.
- bjtitus 16y ago
  I don't know that I agree that data portability is the problem. Nearly everyone (college aged kids) I know use Facebook exclusively for social networking. I don't think they care if their groups are portable. I think the root problem is encouraging people to make them. I think this is why Groups became shareable but a better UX or automatic algorithm for creating them would help tremendously. Some kind of incentive for creating groups would help as well. I think the group messaging features could do this (group text, especially).
  - joebadmo 16y ago
    You're probably right, and I'm speaking mostly from my place of aversion to Facebook. But anecdotally I feel like there is a slow shift away from Facebook happening. Dave Winer talks about the cyclical nature of these things, and I think I agree that while we're in a closed part of the cycle right now, we're heading toward a more open one.
joe_the_user 16y ago
I was added to a Facebook group. It's something I'm only peripherally interested in. It generates way to much content. It seems like a step toward Facebook becoming more spammy than it was. I agree that Facebook understands the need to segment and the need to not be spammy. But suspect Facebook is still going to be drawn down that road because it has only a limited amount of things it can do make/keep the site interesting - aside from the impetus for public-for-advertising stuff.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  I've never heard of anyone being added to so many Facebook groups that it was a problem for them to just remove themselves from the ones they didn't like. I've been added to three since they rolled them out and I'm a fairly heavy user.
  - notyourwork 16y ago
    It could have something to do with the group in question producing way too much content though the OP has interest in being in that particular group. Perhaps this is a group for a university class, or potentially a interest group of some sort.
  - TrevorJ 16y ago
    It causes a problem in that it creates more overhead. having a facebook account is creating more an more overhead for users as time goes on. Every time they change privacy settings you have to go read some article on how to make sure this or that bit of data hasn't been revealed to people you don't want it to be revealed to. Now with groups, you've got to take an active roll once again in order to keep unwanted messages from hitting your email inbox every time somebody wants to add you to a group. The overhead for the end user keeps creeping upward, and that is the real core issue.

by bjtitus 16y ago

joebadmo 16y ago

There's an inherent tension between people's desire for granular control and their resistance to exercising that control, ie I want robust lists, but I don't want to have to manage them. I kind of feel like once list/group data is portable between services/networks, it won't be as big of a problem, since you'd only have to do it once, and management after that can be at the time of contact creation/connection. I also think using the physical place metaphors more explicitly could be interesting. Like you could make a "bar" place, where your bar friends gather. Functionally I suppose it would be identical to Facebook groups. What I'm really hoping for, though is that in the future once identity data is portable, the existing social networks will be more akin to places. Facebook will be the place for shallow, bland, regulated, cursory interaction. Twitter will be the place for shouting loud and pithy aphorisms in public. You could create private places for different purposes as the needs arise.

bjtitus 16y ago
I don't know that I agree that data portability is the problem. Nearly everyone (college aged kids) I know use Facebook exclusively for social networking. I don't think they care if their groups are portable. I think the root problem is encouraging people to make them. I think this is why Groups became shareable but a better UX or automatic algorithm for creating them would help tremendously. Some kind of incentive for creating groups would help as well. I think the group messaging features could do this (group text, especially).
- joebadmo 16y ago
  You're probably right, and I'm speaking mostly from my place of aversion to Facebook. But anecdotally I feel like there is a slow shift away from Facebook happening. Dave Winer talks about the cyclical nature of these things, and I think I agree that while we're in a closed part of the cycle right now, we're heading toward a more open one.

joe_the_user 16y ago

I was added to a Facebook group. It's something I'm only peripherally interested in. It generates way to much content. It seems like a step toward Facebook becoming more spammy than it was. I agree that Facebook understands the need to segment and the need to not be spammy. But suspect Facebook is still going to be drawn down that road because it has only a limited amount of things it can do make/keep the site interesting - aside from the impetus for public-for-advertising stuff.

glhaynes 16y ago
I've never heard of anyone being added to so many Facebook groups that it was a problem for them to just remove themselves from the ones they didn't like. I've been added to three since they rolled them out and I'm a fairly heavy user.
- notyourwork 16y ago
  It could have something to do with the group in question producing way too much content though the OP has interest in being in that particular group. Perhaps this is a group for a university class, or potentially a interest group of some sort.
- TrevorJ 16y ago
  It causes a problem in that it creates more overhead. having a facebook account is creating more an more overhead for users as time goes on. Every time they change privacy settings you have to go read some article on how to make sure this or that bit of data hasn't been revealed to people you don't want it to be revealed to. Now with groups, you've got to take an active roll once again in order to keep unwanted messages from hitting your email inbox every time somebody wants to add you to a group. The overhead for the end user keeps creeping upward, and that is the real core issue.