Organization of Friendships is a Key Downside of Facebook

Great minds very often think alike. In this case, two people I admire very much — Liz Strauss and Chris Brogan — seem to agree about one of Facebook’s major weaknesses: the way relationships are organized.

Chris posted today that Facebook should let him organize his friends any way he wants:

If I click my “Friends” tab in Facebook, I see an alphabetical list. There are a few other ways to organize this list, but in none of the cases does this map to my real universe. I can’t, for instance, group Jim Long and Jonny Goldstein together, even though I know they both are in the DC area, are both media makers, and are both people I’d want to think about in similar ways. I just can’t see people in this fashion. My own friends are shuffled into a deck in an order I have no power over. (Yes, I’ve heard of “Top Friends.” I use it. Not enough.)…

I want to slice and dice this data any way I choose. I want tagging. I want visual shuffling, the same way I do with business cards. Know how I organize my business cards? By event. If I met you at TechCrunch40, your card is right there beside other people I met there.

Meanwhile, Liz and I had a great discussion in Skype. After the jump, an excerpt that deals with this exact same problem:

Teresa: I remember back when FB was all college kids. Joining a group was as much a statement as it was a way to have a conversation. Like, you’d join the group, “I will go just out of my way to step on that crunchy looking leaf.” And it would be this big viral in joke and the group would spread like mad, but nobody would really be interested in participating or having a conversation
Liz: Yeah, after a while it’s just a big message book.
Teresa: But that’s what college kids wanted because all our friends were right there on campus.
Liz: I know. I know
Teresa: Facebook was sort of a digital overlay for campus life
Liz: I think it will be over by May unless some cool killer apps start happening.
Teresa: wow
Liz: I could be totally clueless on that, but what’s to keep me there?
Teresa: I think you could be right, unless they continue to make changes away from the digital overlay and more toward the digital community.
Teresa: It’s like Chris Brogan was talking about today, Facebook doesn’t let you see your friends the way you actually see your friends. The way you group them in your brain. The friend organization interface is still in digital overlay mode.
Liz: Yeah or talk to them and the details I see are inconsequential . . . do I care that you commented on a video?
Teresa: Well, you might care what my comment was if the video was in a category where we both expressed an interest.
Liz: That’s about 1 in how many . . . for you?
Teresa: About 10 I think. One in 10 items in my newsfeed actually grabs my attention anymore.
Liz: I’m about 1 in 20. It’s, “oh that again,” because there’s not that much that folks can do. So folks look flat in there. You can only see the dimensions that facebook offers. Conversation is so structured and barriers are so many that everyone becomes one sentences bits about 10 or 12 subjects.
Teresa: Ok, so how would you change that specifically?
Liz: Find a way to organize it into to communities around centers where folks have common interests…

We’re all saying the same thing here, essentially. Facebook used to be a digital overlay for campus life, which meant that all I really cared about were hookups and random meetings. I knew everyone on Facebook from either high school or college, and I would never accept a friend request from someone that I didn’t know in real life. Facebook was a great tool for managing the limited category of human relationships it facilitated.

But I’m not in college anymore. My life opened up at the same time that Facebook opened up. I work in technology and I meet people virtually and in the real world. I read people’s blogs and I meet them at conferences. I’d like to be able to see which friends I met at Gnomedex and which I met at a Green Day concert.

Random encounters currently encapsulates both of those scenarios, which means that my friend Miles is in the same list as Vanessa Fox. They’re both awesome, but I don’t mentally put Miles and Vanessa in the same category, so why should they be in the same friend category on Facebook?

Organizing friends into groups would allow a lot of other cool features:

• Advanced privacy permissions: My work friends can’t see photos of my college friends.
• Interest/content/friend alignment: When someone in my group of friends that I talk politics with posts something about politics it’s more likely to show up in my news feed than a politics post from a friend with whom I do not discuss politics (as if such a thing would ever happen).
• Messaging several friends with one keyword: Jott (a client) allows me to send a message to many contacts at the same time. I have pre-created lists called “family,” “work,” and “girls.” All I have to do to message them all at once is to call Jott and tell them that I want to send a message to the three of them. Why can’t I do that with Facebook?
• Messaging friends by interest: I might not know that one of my Facebook friends in Seattle likes Green Day, but if I post that I’m going to the concert, she’ll automatically get a message. Then we have the opportunity to arrange tickets or carpool to the Tacoma Dome together.

Facebook opened itself up to requirements like these when it elected to take its offering beyond the student market. Now it needs to catch up with its own interface liabilities.

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