Category Archives: Communication

If They Know, Why Doesn’t Facebook Let Me See Just My Real Friends?

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There is this really cool conversation going in the blogosphere right now about real friends vs. online friends and how they’re played out in social networking applications.

Facebook has allowed you to stay in touch with more than just your close day to day friends. It has given you the power to track and keep in touch with your whole friendship ecosystem.  It allows you to keep in touch with everyone from your best friends to the person you met a conference once to your long lost friend from third grade.

The thing is for the most part all of the relationships are seen as the same in Facebook.  This makes it incredibly hard to filter out the noise and just hear the signal because you have this constant stream of everyone’s activity.

Robert Scoble has very elequently stated in some recent videos how Facebook knows who you’re close to.  They can tell you interact with, message, poke, attend events, went to school with and so on.  You think they could put in some type of automatic filter that allowed me to see my close friends more prominently then the person from the the conference who I don’t really talk to or know that well.  The thing is… they don’t have this feature.

Facebook should be using all of this activity and attention data to shape how we see the dat that is being presented to us.

Right now there is a Facebook Application where you can choose who your “Top Friends” are (which I still think is a dumb idea). I’d love to see an application which would show you who your top friends are purely based on the history of all your interactions on Facebook.

Facebook’s News Feed – Aggregating Together Your Friends’ Social Activity History (Or Not)

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Tonight, we continue our walk through Facebook, looking at what it has to offer.

In today’s active global society, it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on with all of your friends. Facebook is ingenious because its convinced users to record their social history in one central location. That social history can then be easily exposed to those that are within your social network.

Within Facebook, this was first done with by getting a very high level view of what friends had changed their profile. Later, Facebook added the ever infamous News Feed, which makes every change within a users social history available for public view. As we all knew this caused a outcry.

During the outcry, users finally started to realize the level of detail that they were exposing to their friends. Now instead of just exposing less of their social history through Facebook, users decided to just hide themselves from the News Feed. It’s entirely possible that there could be things happening with your friends that you don’t know about because all you’re doing is paying attention to the news feed.

What if I wanna expose my social activity history to some people and not to others? One of the biggest added values of Facebook is being able to see that aggregated view of your entire network’s activity. If key people are being hid, it makes it less useful. The thing is I’m forced to treat my long lost friend from 5th grade the same way I treat my best friends. There is no way you can choose who you expose information to.

I think so much could be done with the News Feed. I’d love to see it be rethought or redone.

Is Facebook creating better community or making our relationships more shallow?

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Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Facebook.   Jeremiah, Scoble, and Nick can’t stop talking about it.  Scoble recently called Facebook “the new business card.” For me, my excitement goes in waves.  I get excited about it and then I two or three weeks without using it.

I just wonder… is Facebook helping us to stay in touch with our community or is it making our relationships more shallow and voyeuristic?

A few weeks ago, I was saying good bye to one of my friends who was moving out of town.   I said something like, “We should make sure that we’re Facebook friends.  It’ll help us all stay in touch.”   So a good face-to-face relationship has turned into the Facebook Newsfeed and Wall posts?  Whats up with that?

There is the Facebook Platform which people are so excited about.  Just take a look at the top applications… Top Friends, Super Poke, Graffiti, Free Gifts, Fortune Cookie, and Horoscope.    While poking people can be fun for a little while, which of these Facebook apps really benefit my life in any way?  They don’t send me running to my computer when I get home from work.

I think Facebook Groups is probably one of the most underdeveloped features in the whole product.  For the most part, people don’t take advantage of the actual group aspects of the application.  Facebook Groups have become profile labels.  You can  be in the “I like naps” group.  This group doesn’t talk about naps or plan get togethers to nap.  It’s just a label.

The Facebook Newsfeed is cool but some people use it and some people don’t.  A lot of times the people that I want to hear from or about keep their updates private and so I’ll never see them.   I dunno.

Just so I’m not all negative… Facebook Events are great.  If I’m marketing a get together, it’s one medium for getting the word out.  For some reason, I still prefer Upcoming as a main marketing tool.   I like Facebook Photos but I feel pretty emotionally invested in Flickr.  I like Facebook Video, especially being able to send my long distance friend video messages.

I dunno….

Over the next week I wanna write a series of posts about Facebook.  I’m going to dive into more of the features.  I want to dive into the philosophy of Facebook and see if I can identify what about it is missing and were it could be improved.  I’ll also see if I can identify what type of social need its filling which is causing it to be so successful.

Translating W3C HTML5 for the rest of the community; a possible role for the Web Standards Project

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One thing is for sure. There are a lot of smart passionate people that care and are involved in the advancement of HTML 5. The kicker is that there a lot more people who want to be involved but W3C technical specification-speak isn’t one of their native languages.

If you’re unfamiliar with what I mean by W3C technical specification-speak, just start reading any W3C technical specifications and you’ll quickly get an idea of what I mean. If you’re not familiar with the nuances of technical specifications, it can be daunting, even for someone who is a seasoned professional. I understand that it is necessary for technical specifications to be written the way they are but you have to cede that this barrier to entry for the community is a problem.

For a Web Developer, HTML is something that we interact with on a day to day basis. When you start talking about the future of the Web and the future of HTML 5, it’s something thats near and dear to our hearts. When we feel like we can’t participate because of the learning curve its saddening, easy to just not care any more, and shut yourself off from the discussion.

This makes it necessary to have people who are going to write good supplementary documentation, supporting material, blog entries, presentations, and much more. We need people who are going to do this for HTML 5. This will be necessary for the success of the specification.

I was excited to read this from Roger Johansson:

Looking forward I think my energy will be best spent helping to produce documents that are useful to and readable by people who create websites. By the looks of things the actual HTML 5 specification will be extremely difficult to read, and basically created for browser vendors only.

I thought Alejandro Moreno’s comment on that post interesting:

I am not experienced enough to join and participate, so I sure am glad you have decided to stick around the HTML5 WG.

Your “translation” efforts will be appreciated!

I have a feeling that this perspective is pretty common.

If the Web Standards Project (WaSP) is looking for a way to stay relevant to the needs of the community, this would be a place they could step in. WaSP could have a HTML 5 Task Force whose mission it is to help act as “translators”, communicators, and ambassadors to the community.

What Does The Web Standards Project Do?

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After Molly H.’s  Call To Action and follow up post (read them) on her blog, I started wondering what the Web Standards Project (WaSP) actually does.  I’m not saying this to be mean.  I’m genuinely curious.

If you look at the blog posts on their Web site,  most of them are updated very infrequently and when they are its very rarely meaty stuff.

What happened to the banner of radical transparency that we all hold so high?

I ask this question because as a Web Standardista I’m told that the Web Standards Project is where the best of the best come to hatch master plans to help conquer the world for Web Standards.

If the organization isn’t transparent with what’s going on… if they aren’t transparent with their discussions, how can they ask me to trust them as an organization?

This Isn’t Journalism; Slate and TechCrunch Should be Embarrassed

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Recently Slate wrote a story about how Rudy Giuliani’s daughter had listed on her Facebook profile that she had supported Barack Obama for President.  Michael Arrington also covered the story on his Web site TechCrunch.

Does anyone else find it slightly disturbing that two well respected online publications would think it important enough to report this story?   Who gives a rats ass  what Rudy Giuliani’s daugther has on her Facebook page.  She’s 18 years old.

This is just cheesy American tabloid style journalism which I think is beneath Slate and TechCrunch.  You publish this story not because you think its important but because you want to score a quick shot at Rudy Giuliani.

Are We Replacing Real Relationships with Facebook, Jason Calacanis Asks

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In a recent post, Jason Calacanis asks the question…

Is Facebook a more efficient, rejection-free, surrogate for the real world? Is that what we want?

I think Jason Calacanis is on to something. Granted there are TONS of positives to it but people can use Facebook as a way not having to deal with relationships in real life.

With Facebook, I can decide who I want to or not to hear from. There aren’t as many surprises. It’s me crafting my own little world that I want to live in. Is that healthy?

Part of life is learning to live with what you can’t control.

More on this to come…

You Are Not In Control

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I’m going to tell you something that they probably don’t talk about in advertising and marketing classes. You’re not in control of your product or in control of your brand. Your users vote with their feet. They decide your fate.

What amazes me is that so many companies, organizations, and people think they can tell their users what to think.  There is this idea that all you have to do is put out the magic marketing campaign and everything will be better.  Reality just doesn’t work that way.

Your users are going to talk about your product. They’re going to talk about your brand. The question is do you wanna be part of the conversation?

This is going to take time. It’s going to take time away from your other initiatives. You can start a blog but it’s not going to magically write itself. You can get an online forum but it’s not going to start itself.  I think you’ll see that building community ultimately pays off.

One of the best examples of this is Digg. They listen to their community and let them take substantial ownership of the product and the brand.

Digg recently instituted some changes to their comments. People didn’t like some of the changes. Kevin Rose asked for everyone’s feed back and listened to what people had to say. They changed the Digg comments again. They knew it was their users that they were there to serve so it was best to listen to what they wanted.

Even a more extreme case is back in May 2007, Digg users were spreading the HD-DVD copy protection key around the site.  Digg quickly took it down.  There was an uproar.  There users spoke and said we want to spread the key wherever they want to put it.  While this may not be the  action I would’ve taken, Digg changed course, decided to get behind their users,  and let them spread the key as they wish.   This endeared Digg even more to its fan base.

You may ask, “What has this gotten Digg?”  Well their numbers have been consistently going up.

The lesson of the day is that you have to listen to your users.  Have a conversation with your users.  You users are in control of your fate.

Will Delta Air Lines Join the Conversation?

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Liz Lawley, professor in the IT Department at RIT (where I went to school), recently blogged about a negative experience that she had with Delta Air Lines.   She had paid extra money to have one of the Delta Air Line employees accompany her son, who was having his first unaccompanied flight. Unfortunately, things went very wrong…
The Delta employee accidentally put her son on the wrong plane and almost sent her son to the wrong city, until a much wider person noticed the error. Liz was pissed and rightly so.  If I had a child and this happened, I’d be pissed.  When she tried to follow up on the problem to see how it was resolved, she was pointed towards red tape.  Like any good Web 2.0 citizen, Liz Lawley blogged about the experience.

If I was Delta Air Lines, I would have one person in our marketing department who did nothing except monitor the Web and social media to see what people were saying about me.  If they did this, they would be able to see the concerns that Liz had about this issue.  They could then work with Liz to craft a solution to this problem.

If you’re a company or a person thats out there trying to accomplish something in the world, people may be talking about you or your organization.  You want to be a member of the community and a part of the conversation.

By being a part of the conversation, you can help to address issues before they spiral out of control.  By being part of the conversation and talking to people with concerns, you can create new evangelists and advocates for your organization.

Friend Me Up

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To quote my man Gary Vaynerchuk, “Friend me up.”  I’ve added a box in the sidebar of my blog with a list of all of the social networks that I’m in.

If you’re a reader of this blog and use one of those networks, please friend me.  It’s always fun to have new friends. :-p  I love getting to know the people read what I write.