Comments on: The Right Rize for Social Media Networks http://www.beginnerbusiness.com/right-size-social-media-networks Starting up, starting over, and staying fresh Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:31:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Byron Alley http://www.beginnerbusiness.com/right-size-social-media-networks/comment-page-1#comment-287 Byron Alley Sun, 31 May 2009 23:24:26 +0000 http://www.beginnerbusiness.com/?p=61#comment-287 That's very much what I'm talking about. The big thing about online social networks is that they need to better fit the way our actual social networks work, including the idea that we have concentric circles of friends as well as separate ones. And the technology also has to serve to create those barriers. If you're only allowed to have 150 friends within a certain category, then maybe it could make it less socially unacceptable to take a friend out of that category. But even better than that would be to do something along the lines of what gmail and gtalk do: to identify your real friends organically, based on whether or not you actually talk *back* to them. So maybe that's the key: to create the concentric groups of "friends" and have them automatically updated based on who you interact with the most. So people you never talk to would be in a limbo stage unless you identified them as "people I like to follow" (meaning the equivalent of subscribing to a newsfeed), and the people you interact with the most would be the only ones to show up in your feed.... UNLESS your closest friends start responding to a less-prioritized message, in which case it would get bumped up as "probably more significant." That’s very much what I’m talking about. The big thing about online social networks is that they need to better fit the way our actual social networks work, including the idea that we have concentric circles of friends as well as separate ones. And the technology also has to serve to create those barriers.

If you’re only allowed to have 150 friends within a certain category, then maybe it could make it less socially unacceptable to take a friend out of that category.

But even better than that would be to do something along the lines of what gmail and gtalk do: to identify your real friends organically, based on whether or not you actually talk *back* to them. So maybe that’s the key: to create the concentric groups of “friends” and have them automatically updated based on who you interact with the most. So people you never talk to would be in a limbo stage unless you identified them as “people I like to follow” (meaning the equivalent of subscribing to a newsfeed), and the people you interact with the most would be the only ones to show up in your feed…. UNLESS your closest friends start responding to a less-prioritized message, in which case it would get bumped up as “probably more significant.”

]]> By: Aaron Dragushan http://www.beginnerbusiness.com/right-size-social-media-networks/comment-page-1#comment-280 Aaron Dragushan Tue, 26 May 2009 15:46:57 +0000 http://www.beginnerbusiness.com/?p=61#comment-280 I like the idea of restricting the number of friends you could have, and Facebook did this with their limit of 5,000 friends (recently removed as they continue to twitter-spasm) but of course the problem is that unfriending someone has social consequences. imho the biggest problem of many of these networks is that they don't give one the tools to be outwardly socially graceful ("but of COURSE we're friends dear!") while allowing us to use the social network as we'd like (real-friends-only). I like the idea of restricting the number of friends you could have, and Facebook did this with their limit of 5,000 friends (recently removed as they continue to twitter-spasm) but of course the problem is that unfriending someone has social consequences. imho the biggest problem of many of these networks is that they don’t give one the tools to be outwardly socially graceful (“but of COURSE we’re friends dear!”) while allowing us to use the social network as we’d like (real-friends-only).

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