Recently a friend of mine posted on his wall (read facebook wall) that his mom is on facebook, and hence he will have to be wary about what he posts. Added to the agony is the fact that we also will have to be rather careful since his mom will also get our updates.
With growing penetration of internet, friend lists have been growing in all directions. With no filter put, It’s a natural concern that people have acquaintances added on their friend lists, whose friend requests they could not put off, but also to whom they would not prefer their updates to go. When we post on Facebook or Twitter, a common thought that remains at the back of our mind is like X should definitely see it, or the other way, this update should not go to Y anyhow.
Paul Adams of Google created a similar picture 3 months back available in his
presentation.
The point is, in contrast to the online homogenous friend list, in real life we have segregated lists. There are people with whom we want to talk about jobs, business the serious side. Then there are people who are old pals from school with whom we share jokes that only they or us can understand and nobody else who gets the update.
There is a set of people to show your sophisticated side, another to go wild with.
A boys group to share some funny restricted content, while another to give updates to the family. Don’t we need this, what say? Obviously Yes.
This one is a real jolt to the growth of social networks, a barrier that modern technology will have to find ways to cross over or go around, because otherwise the whole idea of social networking comes crashing down. Virtual realities will have to embrace the real realities.
Now let us have a quick introspection on how our social networks are dealing with it?
Facebook: Has got a concept called lists already but anybody barely uses it. On 6th of October 2010, Facebook announced some improvements in this regard. A new concept called groups has been introduced. You can have a look on the official post from Facebook
here.
The concept seems promising, but how it fares still remains unpredictable.
Orkut: Who cares ofcourse!! Orkut is dead, because it has lost its exclusivity. Period.
But remember, in Web business, it’s just one product that turns the power table upside down. It has happened every now and then and it will continue to do so. That’s the beauty of the war of web.
Given to the marketing and financial power of Google, along with the intellectual breath, Google cannot be denied as a company to watch in social networks market. For Google it’s a golden opportunity, if it can create a system, where people can easily optimize their profile for different visitors. Google already has our data, it has the power of algorithms, now it is all about matching these capabilities. Facebook failed in its first attempt with lists, because of the lack of user engagement, Can Google use its innovation and headway?
Linkedin: Is not facing such problems because till date Linkedin means business. No frills, which is a good thing. Atleast people know what to expect.
Twitter: I am still exploring Twitter these days. Its fascinating, but I haven’t come across any such feature on twitter. If there is, please do let me know.
So we see here that a substantial design is yet to be searched to meet this growing concern. There is an
obvious need of context based social networks, where users can optimize their profile according to the preferences that they have set for the visitors. Innovation expected!!
