Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Google Research On Social Networks

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the someone-research-the-superpoke dept.

mantis2009 writes "Paul Adams, a senior user experience researcher at Google, has posted a slideshow from a recent presentation that shows insightful research into how people use social networking technologies. The presentation describes several shortcomings of existing technology, and it highlights specific modalities that current technology (ahem, Facebook) gets wrong. Adams concludes that social networking applications are a 'crude approximation' of real-life social networks. 'People don't have one group of friends,' Adams research in several different countries shows that in reality, most people have between four to six groups of friends. He argues that social networking applications need to be built with that reality in mind."

7 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. So what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    So what, you can group on facebook, even tag different people into different groups and then adjust privacy and broadcast setting accordingly. May be because they are not separated on you provife where it says 358 friends in stead of 358 friends in 12 groups, average members per group 18.....

  2. Just to point out... by Traegorn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Facebook DOES support multiple groups of friend -- you can create separate friend lists and subdivide what permissions different sets get.

    --
    TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
    1. Re:Just to point out... by mantis2009 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Separating friend lists on Facebook as you describe doesn't support all of the functions mentioned in the slideshow. For example, posting comments on Facebook photos goes out to all people with permission to see your comments on photos. The slideshow suggests allowing different comments to be seen by different groups of friends. In the current Facebook implementation, your friends either have permission to see all your comments on all photos, or none.

    2. Re:Just to point out... by DragonWriter · · Score: 2, Informative

      Facebook DOES support multiple groups of friend -- you can create separate friend lists and subdivide what permissions different sets get.

      It supports multiple groups of friends in terms of permission lists (though that's a recent feature, and may well not have been around at the time the research was done supporting this presentation), but it doesn't support them as separable silos. So, even if its somewhat less crude than the state presented in the presentation, it still has the same fundamental problem the presentation points to in terms of groups.

      Of course, the presentation talks about more than just groups, it talks about important distinctions people make within groups regarding closeness, trust on/interest in particular issues, etc.

  3. More than one... by Itninja · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use multiple SN's. For professional contacts I use LinkedIn. For personal contacts I use Google Buzz (or at least did until recently). For imaginary contacts I use WoW.

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  4. Re:First! by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The proper way to express your feeling is to say "Dude, fuck Facebook. Seriously."

  5. Similar to Danah Boyd use of the term "publics" by v(*_*)vvvv · · Score: 2, Informative

    Danah Boyd had a lot of very similar things to say at www2010, and it is worth mentioning:
    http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/futureweb2010/danah_boyd_www_keynote.xhtml

    And I am sure others have reached similar conclusions also, but Paul Adams is definitely not the first to mention the problems of having one "public". Danah goes further and challenges the common notion of privacy more generically than just focusing on social network systems.