12 ms·

This is a very slippery slope for FB, I feel. No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now. Next up: Let you see who is searching for you / browsed yo

This is a very slippery slope for FB, I feel. No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now. Next up: Let you see who is searching for you / browsed your photo albums / etc.. ??? Very "badoo-esque" I think- Not that its a bad thing, it just feels out of place here. FB is not a dating site.

jeez 14y ago
Orkut used to list the people who checked out your profile. Even they scrapped it long ago.
- simonw 14y ago
  LinkedIn still does, which makes me a bit nervous about surfing around on LinkedIn.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - pwaring 14y ago
    You can turn that LinkedIn feature off, or at least they claim that you can.
  - andreyf 14y ago
    You can set it to show you as "Anonymous LinkedIn user", but then you can't see who looks at your profile, either.
- slig 14y ago
  AFAIK, it's still there. And they placed this "feature" without notice, so people woke up with a list os his/hers last visitors. It's very awkward .
  - mayanksinghal 14y ago
    There was an option to turn it off, at least it was there 4 years ago. You could make your visits invisible - but you were then unable to see who visited your profile. Seems fair to me.
tibbon 14y ago
Monetization possibility? Pay to be able to see who is looking at your photos, etc? Pay to keep your message read status private?
- chubot 14y ago
  LinkedIn already does this sort of, which is annoying. People can see you browsing them if they also agree to have themselves be seen. Tit for Tat. I believe there is also a monetization component but I don't know the details. I think some of the paid plans allow you to see who is viewing you regardless of their own setting. Though somehow I feel it's less creepy for "professional" sites vs. personal sites. I don't really care about coworkers looking for me, or if I'm looking at coworkers. But if it's friends from 10 years ago it is awkward.
  - ryguytilidie 14y ago
    Yeah I have no problem with LinkedIn doing that because they are way more about making business connections whereas Facebook is a much more personal thing where I think people like to keep their actions more private.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- gaius 14y ago
  Haha, OKCupid does that, you can pay for "Alpha" status that means you can stalk people's profiles without them knowing.
gaius 14y ago
No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now. Then, umm, don't add them as friends. BBM has statuses for delivered (the message has arrived on the recipients device) and read (they have actually opened it). It's very very useful. You know at a glance where a conversation stands, you never have to "follow-up" to check a message arrived, you know if a message isn't in state D not to bother because they'll be out of reception, etc. It basically makes a BBM conversation much more natural than on SMS, or any of the big chat networks.
- adgar 14y ago
  > Then, umm, don't add them as friends. This completely ignores the reality of how people use Facebook, as if one could partition every personal relationship in your life into two homogeneous groups "friends" and "not friends." Yes, I know you can have friend lists on Facebook, but this feature clearly embraces its uniformity.
  - zuralski 14y ago
    The logical conclusion then is that "the reality of how people use Facebook" is going to change. Facebook (not for the first time) is attempting to shape users' behaviour. I am curious what sort of thinking went behind this change.
  - gaius 14y ago
    It's worth noting that G+ was intended to solve the fine-grained partitioning of people, and yet, no-one I know uses it regularly. It's FB for friends, LinkedIn for work contacts, for most people.
    - adgar 14y ago
      > It's worth noting that G+ was intended to solve the fine-grained partitioning of people, and yet, no-one I know uses it regularly. So... you're arguing that people choose social networks based on more than the presence of a particular implementation of a single feature? Groundbreaking addition to your "all your friends are the same" theory.
actua11y 14y ago
Letting users see who has browsed their profile Actually that would be a very interesting feature because you would see your profile being "browsed" by all sorts of strange sources from all over the world. Most users simply have no idea how much this information is being scraped and analysed. It would probably scare some of them away from Facebook. The feature itself is an old one that was around before Facebook. It seems to make good sense for a site like Facebook in the early days when it was primarily used by college students. But there is no way they would implement it now in my opinion because what it would reveal to users would freak them out.
reneherse 14y ago
In the realm of unintended consequences, God knows this is going to be exploited as a tool for bullying.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- TomGullen 14y ago
  Blame the people who are bullies, not the tools
qq66 14y ago
Facebook has always been a dating site.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  No it hasn't. I'm a very happily married man who uses Facebook to talk to friends I haven't seen in a while. I have no interest whatsoever in romance (of other people than my wife!).
  - sophacles 14y ago
    Just because you don't use it that way, doesn't change that FB as a dating site is and always has been a major use case. The GP never said "exclusively a dating site". Much like stating "linux has always been a workstation os" doesn't invalidate the people who only have used it as a server os.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      I'm curious about this. How many people actually use it for dating? I encourage you to prove that it's primary use case is dating... I would strongly suggest it is not! As for saying that "Linux has always been a workstation OS" - clearly that is wrong. So yes, it doesn't invalidate those who use it as a server OS - it just means that it was never only a workstation OS.
- drivingmenuts 14y ago
  Actually, it apparently started as a way for Zuckerberg to get back at all the "popular" people at Harvard, of which he was not. So dating site? Definitely not.
  - Drbble 14y ago
    That's a myth.
jaylevitt 14y ago
For what it's worth, AOL had this 25 years ago and never even had complaints. And yes, people came to realize that "DanBlake read this" meant DanBlake's client had read this, and you, personally, might not have seen it yet - or, if you had, you'd marked it unread for later reading. But we had that feature from day 1; user expectations grew up around it. Introducing this kind of behavior mid-game is dangerous for all the reasons everyone's mentioned.

jeez 14y ago

Orkut used to list the people who checked out your profile. Even they scrapped it long ago.

simonw 14y ago
LinkedIn still does, which makes me a bit nervous about surfing around on LinkedIn.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pwaring 14y ago
  You can turn that LinkedIn feature off, or at least they claim that you can.
- andreyf 14y ago
  You can set it to show you as "Anonymous LinkedIn user", but then you can't see who looks at your profile, either.
slig 14y ago
AFAIK, it's still there. And they placed this "feature" without notice, so people woke up with a list os his/hers last visitors. It's very awkward .
- mayanksinghal 14y ago
  There was an option to turn it off, at least it was there 4 years ago. You could make your visits invisible - but you were then unable to see who visited your profile. Seems fair to me.

tibbon 14y ago

Monetization possibility? Pay to be able to see who is looking at your photos, etc? Pay to keep your message read status private?

chubot 14y ago
LinkedIn already does this sort of, which is annoying. People can see you browsing them if they also agree to have themselves be seen. Tit for Tat. I believe there is also a monetization component but I don't know the details. I think some of the paid plans allow you to see who is viewing you regardless of their own setting. Though somehow I feel it's less creepy for "professional" sites vs. personal sites. I don't really care about coworkers looking for me, or if I'm looking at coworkers. But if it's friends from 10 years ago it is awkward.
- ryguytilidie 14y ago
  Yeah I have no problem with LinkedIn doing that because they are way more about making business connections whereas Facebook is a much more personal thing where I think people like to keep their actions more private.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
gaius 14y ago
Haha, OKCupid does that, you can pay for "Alpha" status that means you can stalk people's profiles without them knowing.

gaius 14y ago

No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now. Then, umm, don't add them as friends. BBM has statuses for delivered (the message has arrived on the recipients device) and read (they have actually opened it). It's very very useful. You know at a glance where a conversation stands, you never have to "follow-up" to check a message arrived, you know if a message isn't in state D not to bother because they'll be out of reception, etc. It basically makes a BBM conversation much more natural than on SMS, or any of the big chat networks.

adgar 14y ago
> Then, umm, don't add them as friends. This completely ignores the reality of how people use Facebook, as if one could partition every personal relationship in your life into two homogeneous groups "friends" and "not friends." Yes, I know you can have friend lists on Facebook, but this feature clearly embraces its uniformity.
- zuralski 14y ago
  The logical conclusion then is that "the reality of how people use Facebook" is going to change. Facebook (not for the first time) is attempting to shape users' behaviour. I am curious what sort of thinking went behind this change.
- gaius 14y ago
  It's worth noting that G+ was intended to solve the fine-grained partitioning of people, and yet, no-one I know uses it regularly. It's FB for friends, LinkedIn for work contacts, for most people.
  - adgar 14y ago
    > It's worth noting that G+ was intended to solve the fine-grained partitioning of people, and yet, no-one I know uses it regularly. So... you're arguing that people choose social networks based on more than the presence of a particular implementation of a single feature? Groundbreaking addition to your "all your friends are the same" theory.

actua11y 14y ago

Letting users see who has browsed their profile Actually that would be a very interesting feature because you would see your profile being "browsed" by all sorts of strange sources from all over the world. Most users simply have no idea how much this information is being scraped and analysed. It would probably scare some of them away from Facebook. The feature itself is an old one that was around before Facebook. It seems to make good sense for a site like Facebook in the early days when it was primarily used by college students. But there is no way they would implement it now in my opinion because what it would reveal to users would freak them out.

reneherse 14y ago

In the realm of unintended consequences, God knows this is going to be exploited as a tool for bullying.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
TomGullen 14y ago
Blame the people who are bullies, not the tools

qq66 14y ago

Facebook has always been a dating site.

chris_wot 14y ago
No it hasn't. I'm a very happily married man who uses Facebook to talk to friends I haven't seen in a while. I have no interest whatsoever in romance (of other people than my wife!).
- sophacles 14y ago
  Just because you don't use it that way, doesn't change that FB as a dating site is and always has been a major use case. The GP never said "exclusively a dating site". Much like stating "linux has always been a workstation os" doesn't invalidate the people who only have used it as a server os.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    I'm curious about this. How many people actually use it for dating? I encourage you to prove that it's primary use case is dating... I would strongly suggest it is not! As for saying that "Linux has always been a workstation OS" - clearly that is wrong. So yes, it doesn't invalidate those who use it as a server OS - it just means that it was never only a workstation OS.
drivingmenuts 14y ago
Actually, it apparently started as a way for Zuckerberg to get back at all the "popular" people at Harvard, of which he was not. So dating site? Definitely not.
- Drbble 14y ago
  That's a myth.

jaylevitt 14y ago

For what it's worth, AOL had this 25 years ago and never even had complaints. And yes, people came to realize that "DanBlake read this" meant DanBlake's client had read this, and you, personally, might not have seen it yet - or, if you had, you'd marked it unread for later reading. But we had that feature from day 1; user expectations grew up around it. Introducing this kind of behavior mid-game is dangerous for all the reasons everyone's mentioned.