4 ms·

For what it's worth, I recently announced that I was changing jobs and moving countries on Facebook, and pretty much all of my friends saw that message, because

For what it's worth, I recently announced that I was changing jobs and moving countries on Facebook, and pretty much all of my friends saw that message, because it's the sort of thing everyone likes and so Facebook will designate it as important whether you pay or not. An engagement would be similar. Events and PMs too, because you get notifications for those. This feature, it seems to me, would be most suitable for things that you may think are very important but that are easy to miss or ignore for your friends. Like a benefit dinner at your kids' school or whatever. Things that are in between personal and promotional. Doesn't freak me out. Don't know why it should.

PakG1 14y ago
I think it depends on your habits. Facebook is unreliable for social interaction on a deep level for me because there is a negative cycle of reinforcement based on poor data. My closest friends are the ones who I want to hear the most about, and yet for some reason, their updates are the ones I see the least. Part of the reason was because my feed was flooded by people who used Facebook voraciously, though I considered many of them only acquaintances to whom I was connected to keep in touch, but nothing more (i.e. Facebook is my social rolodex, while LinkedIn is my professional rolodex). But I'll comment on what's in my feed, and so I'm interacting with those for whom I care less. That interaction is recorded by Facebook as saying, "Look, these guys must be good friends, they're interacting with each other." So Facebook sends me more of their stuff, giving even less opportunity for my closest friends' stuff to pop up in my feed. It's no wonder that with my closest friends, we rather use email for our interactions, which ironically further reinforces to Facebook that I'm not close to these people: wow, look, these people don't interact at all, they must hate each other! Let's not send him any more updates from those people! Path was an interesting idea for intimacy, but why sign up for yet another service when email is so easy and already proven? We even tried setting up a private Facebook group titled Posse to stop using email. Didn't work for various reasons. I still log into Facebook because I enjoy seeing what's up with people, etc. But I never go there to interact with my closest friends anymore. That ship somehow sailed a long time ago, and I'm not going to go through a manual process of ranking people to a special group, or anything like that, to fix the issue. Ironically, as Zuckerberg once famously said in response to Circles, "We found out that people hate making lists."
- flyt 14y ago
  Add those people to your "close friends" FB friend list (it's a default list that everybody has and can't delete) and you'll get a FB notification every time they do something. It can be noisy but if you have a small core of people it'll ensure you never miss what they're up to.
  - PakG1 14y ago
    Quoting myself: That ship somehow sailed a long time ago, and I'm not going to go through a manual process of ranking people to a special group, or anything like that, to fix the issue. Ironically, as Zuckerberg once famously said in response to Circles, "We found out that people hate making lists." If that feature were there when my Facebook friends numbered below 50, sure. Easy to sift through 50 to find 40. At over 600, to find 40, not so easy, and laziness dictates don't bother when email is working just fine. edit: I can see the rebuttal coming: if you know 40 people's email addresses, you know 40 people's facebook names. Should be easy to add them to the special list. The point is not just that I be able to track them. It's also that we be willing to contact each other. There needs to be some momentum for us to all start caring to message each other on Facebook, otherwise the negative cycle continues. And we're too lazy to bother now. Honestly, I think anyone who tries to solve this problem doesn't realize that the problem's stakeholders don't care if it's not solved. Perhaps that's only in my case, I don't know.
    - flyt 14y ago
      You can't remember the names of <10 people that you count as your best friends and are already connected to on Facebook?
      - PakG1 14y ago
        Quoting myself (this edit happened long before your reply): I can see the rebuttal coming: if you know 40 people's email addresses, you know 40 people's facebook names. Should be easy to add them to the special list. The point is not just that I be able to track them. It's also that we be willing to contact each other. There needs to be some momentum for us to all start caring to message each other on Facebook, otherwise the negative cycle continues. And we're too lazy to bother now. Honestly, I think anyone who tries to solve this problem doesn't realize that the problem's stakeholders don't care if it's not solved. Perhaps that's only in my case, I don't know.

PakG1 14y ago

I think it depends on your habits. Facebook is unreliable for social interaction on a deep level for me because there is a negative cycle of reinforcement based on poor data. My closest friends are the ones who I want to hear the most about, and yet for some reason, their updates are the ones I see the least. Part of the reason was because my feed was flooded by people who used Facebook voraciously, though I considered many of them only acquaintances to whom I was connected to keep in touch, but nothing more (i.e. Facebook is my social rolodex, while LinkedIn is my professional rolodex). But I'll comment on what's in my feed, and so I'm interacting with those for whom I care less. That interaction is recorded by Facebook as saying, "Look, these guys must be good friends, they're interacting with each other." So Facebook sends me more of their stuff, giving even less opportunity for my closest friends' stuff to pop up in my feed. It's no wonder that with my closest friends, we rather use email for our interactions, which ironically further reinforces to Facebook that I'm not close to these people: wow, look, these people don't interact at all, they must hate each other! Let's not send him any more updates from those people! Path was an interesting idea for intimacy, but why sign up for yet another service when email is so easy and already proven? We even tried setting up a private Facebook group titled Posse to stop using email. Didn't work for various reasons. I still log into Facebook because I enjoy seeing what's up with people, etc. But I never go there to interact with my closest friends anymore. That ship somehow sailed a long time ago, and I'm not going to go through a manual process of ranking people to a special group, or anything like that, to fix the issue. Ironically, as Zuckerberg once famously said in response to Circles, "We found out that people hate making lists."

flyt 14y ago
Add those people to your "close friends" FB friend list (it's a default list that everybody has and can't delete) and you'll get a FB notification every time they do something. It can be noisy but if you have a small core of people it'll ensure you never miss what they're up to.
- PakG1 14y ago
  Quoting myself: That ship somehow sailed a long time ago, and I'm not going to go through a manual process of ranking people to a special group, or anything like that, to fix the issue. Ironically, as Zuckerberg once famously said in response to Circles, "We found out that people hate making lists." If that feature were there when my Facebook friends numbered below 50, sure. Easy to sift through 50 to find 40. At over 600, to find 40, not so easy, and laziness dictates don't bother when email is working just fine. edit: I can see the rebuttal coming: if you know 40 people's email addresses, you know 40 people's facebook names. Should be easy to add them to the special list. The point is not just that I be able to track them. It's also that we be willing to contact each other. There needs to be some momentum for us to all start caring to message each other on Facebook, otherwise the negative cycle continues. And we're too lazy to bother now. Honestly, I think anyone who tries to solve this problem doesn't realize that the problem's stakeholders don't care if it's not solved. Perhaps that's only in my case, I don't know.
  - flyt 14y ago
    You can't remember the names of <10 people that you count as your best friends and are already connected to on Facebook?
    - PakG1 14y ago
      Quoting myself (this edit happened long before your reply): I can see the rebuttal coming: if you know 40 people's email addresses, you know 40 people's facebook names. Should be easy to add them to the special list. The point is not just that I be able to track them. It's also that we be willing to contact each other. There needs to be some momentum for us to all start caring to message each other on Facebook, otherwise the negative cycle continues. And we're too lazy to bother now. Honestly, I think anyone who tries to solve this problem doesn't realize that the problem's stakeholders don't care if it's not solved. Perhaps that's only in my case, I don't know.