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New Google Research On Social Networks
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."
Facebook DOES support multiple groups of friend -- you can create separate friend lists and subdivide what permissions different sets get.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
I completely agree. I have to refuse friend requests from family and co-workers because I don't want them viewing my status/pictures. It would be great if I could post a status update to my "New York Friends Group", or share a picture album with my "Family Group".
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.
... girlfriends, wives.
Have gnu, will travel.
It goes beyond the problem of having different groups of friends. The problem is that in real life most people have many different personae. You would say and do things with your friends from college that you would never say or do in front of your boss, as the most obvious example.
IRL we put a lot of work into constructing and maintaining these different personae, and we do a lot of work to keep them separate.
With social networking as it is, that's all over. Even if you never participate in Facebook, you are probably tagged in dozens or even hundreds of photos, and the odds are pretty good that some of them show you doing things you wouldn't do in front of your boss.
So the question is, will we adapt the technology to allow the creation and maintenance of a variety of different personae, or will we adapt our own behavior so as to present one consistent, universally acceptable persona to the world?
I think many of us, particuarly the younger generation, are already doing the latter. In order to adapt to this, we have to adjust our expectations of people. Maybe as an employer, you just have to get used to being able to see pictures of your employees smoking weed at parties and so forth, and not let it bother you. However, until we adapt, it creates the problem that suddenly everything you say and do is potentially public (whether you participate in social media or not).
My site: Free Nature Pictures
but the rest of the world?
Partially, its a grind game. I recently deleted my account, but one behavior I saw was some of my female acquaintances competing to see whom can collect the highest number of male friends, by any means. I enjoyed some of their pictures at least (hope my wife doesn't read this). The middle school girl game of seeing whom has more friends on the bus, minus (most of) the teasing. A nice looking young woman can easily acquire 4 digits of admirers, if not friends.
Also whenever you hear a trite explanation of why someone is on facebook, always assume the result is the opposite of their goal. Unemployed people claim they are on FB because its a great place to find a job, although they never find one, at least because of FB. I'm at the age where former schoolmates and coworkers are now very lonely stay at home moms, so they claim to be on FB because they're looking for adult interaction, but they post stupid stuff all day, so no one reads them. Single guy friends claim FB is a great way to get some, so they post every freaking benchpress set and every mile on the bicycle, and every time they enter or leave a "trendy bar", yet, they remain single. Everyone in America has heard of "someone" whom got a job or rekindled old friendships or got some because of FB. However, for 99% of the population, FB just simply doesn't work, but as long as there's people who have convinced themselves that it works, its all good, for FB anyway. Its a religion, basically.
And the final reason is simple curiosity. Whatever happened to that stoner dropout dude that I hung out with in 8th grade study hall? Oh, thats interesting. One of my coworkers was going on and on about some girl whom would never date him in high school, turns out she now publicly prefers other women, which explains that, or maybe it's his fault, whatever. Well, that was fun for a little while, goodbye facebook.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The tool doesn't need to prompt you for "closeness level". It could just track who you post to, and then when you post a message or a photo, give you a list of contacts, and ask which ones you want to send to. It could sort the list based on frequency, and the people you are close to will filter to the top.
Share with (check all that apply):
[ ] Wife, Mary
[ ] Sister, Betty click here to check this one and everyone above
[ ] Dad, Bob click here to check this one and everyone above
[ ] Mom. Irma click here to check this one and everyone above
[ ] Cousin, Fred click here to check this one and everyone above
[ ] Distant Cousin, Joe click here to check this one and everyone above
The proper way to express your feeling is to say "Dude, fuck Facebook. Seriously."