One of the unfortunate things about the holidays is that despite the large chunk of time off, you always seem to run out of time to do things. Between family, travel, various gatherings, and the constant barrage of college football and video games (*cough*) something had to give. In my case, that something was staying up to date in the happenings of the various things I follow. It wasnt an intentionally decision - just a byproduct of the holidays and an excessive amount of mental laziness =)
As such, my return to "real life" was ushered in by a disturbingly bloated RSS reader, the bottom of which I will likely never see. But within the insanity filled memory banks of my own digital reconnaissance team are many delicious nuggets of joy which I'll likely be commenting on over the next few days.
We'll start however, with a new feature from our friends at Facebook. A feature so simple, and yet so brilliant that it has shattered my holiday hangover mind. What is this new feature you say? How would personalized contact groups tickle your fancy?
As you can see, this new feature lets you take all of your friends, and group them in meaningful ways that make them easier to manage and give you more control over how you communicate with them. Once you've grouped your friends, you can send messages just to members of a particular group, making it very easy to quickly replicate the functionality of a list serve/ mailing list within Facebook. Maybe I want to send a quick note to all the members of my Family group to coordinate holiday plans. Or if you're using Facebook for business, maybe you'd like to send only your clients a note about a new service you are providing. Looking for that EduSpin? If you're one of those people with 5,000 friends, then you more than likely stole the sign in sheet for every class and activity you've ever been a part of. This new feature lets you group those friends, making it easy to communicate with just the people in your Physics class - or better yet, just the people in your Physics group in your Physics class. You feeling me?
The ability to group friends also lets you fine tune the information you take in. Maybe I only want to see update from my Penn State friends. Or I only want to see what the High school crowd is doing. You get the idea.
So its nice and its novel but on its own this really isnt earth shattering. But if you take the next logical step, then an a-ha moment emerges.
I wrote a post a while back that discussed how the social pressure to "be everyones friend" coupled with the homogenization of all of our social groups could eventually lead to the downfall of Facebook. In its current state, the contact groups feature doesnt solve that problem, but imagine if you add in more granular privacy controls to go along with it.
I don't want the group "Family" to be able to see what Groups I'm involved in. I want to lock "The Man" out from being able to view my pictures and my wall. Or maybe you want the man to be able to see your pictures - but in an a la carte fashion that you control. My high school and college friends can see that picture of me doing a naked keg stand, but I think I'll hide it from clients and business partners.
Obviously there is a danger of Facebook becoming a content micromanagement nightmare, but having the power to make that choice for yourself could drastically reduce the chance for "accidents", or be the driving force behind an eventual exodus from social networking. Such privacy controls would also afford an even greater level of sharing between certain groups, because the risk of public humiliation would be reduced. I have more than a few friends who would like to share more on Facebook, but are skeptical to do so because right now, privacy in Facebook is an all or nothing enterprise once you've made it onto someone's friends list.
Now to be fair, this is all theorycraft at the moment. Personalized group privacy controls are still a pipe dream in my fragile little mind. But I don't think its a stretch to expect that Facebook's devs would be looking to offer that level of control sometime in the future, and I think this personalized groups feature paves the way for it. It would be a wise decision to say the least, and one that could change the game in a big way.
As such, my return to "real life" was ushered in by a disturbingly bloated RSS reader, the bottom of which I will likely never see. But within the insanity filled memory banks of my own digital reconnaissance team are many delicious nuggets of joy which I'll likely be commenting on over the next few days.
We'll start however, with a new feature from our friends at Facebook. A feature so simple, and yet so brilliant that it has shattered my holiday hangover mind. What is this new feature you say? How would personalized contact groups tickle your fancy?
As you can see, this new feature lets you take all of your friends, and group them in meaningful ways that make them easier to manage and give you more control over how you communicate with them. Once you've grouped your friends, you can send messages just to members of a particular group, making it very easy to quickly replicate the functionality of a list serve/ mailing list within Facebook. Maybe I want to send a quick note to all the members of my Family group to coordinate holiday plans. Or if you're using Facebook for business, maybe you'd like to send only your clients a note about a new service you are providing. Looking for that EduSpin? If you're one of those people with 5,000 friends, then you more than likely stole the sign in sheet for every class and activity you've ever been a part of. This new feature lets you group those friends, making it easy to communicate with just the people in your Physics class - or better yet, just the people in your Physics group in your Physics class. You feeling me?
The ability to group friends also lets you fine tune the information you take in. Maybe I only want to see update from my Penn State friends. Or I only want to see what the High school crowd is doing. You get the idea.
So its nice and its novel but on its own this really isnt earth shattering. But if you take the next logical step, then an a-ha moment emerges.
I wrote a post a while back that discussed how the social pressure to "be everyones friend" coupled with the homogenization of all of our social groups could eventually lead to the downfall of Facebook. In its current state, the contact groups feature doesnt solve that problem, but imagine if you add in more granular privacy controls to go along with it.
I don't want the group "Family" to be able to see what Groups I'm involved in. I want to lock "The Man" out from being able to view my pictures and my wall. Or maybe you want the man to be able to see your pictures - but in an a la carte fashion that you control. My high school and college friends can see that picture of me doing a naked keg stand, but I think I'll hide it from clients and business partners.
Obviously there is a danger of Facebook becoming a content micromanagement nightmare, but having the power to make that choice for yourself could drastically reduce the chance for "accidents", or be the driving force behind an eventual exodus from social networking. Such privacy controls would also afford an even greater level of sharing between certain groups, because the risk of public humiliation would be reduced. I have more than a few friends who would like to share more on Facebook, but are skeptical to do so because right now, privacy in Facebook is an all or nothing enterprise once you've made it onto someone's friends list.
Now to be fair, this is all theorycraft at the moment. Personalized group privacy controls are still a pipe dream in my fragile little mind. But I don't think its a stretch to expect that Facebook's devs would be looking to offer that level of control sometime in the future, and I think this personalized groups feature paves the way for it. It would be a wise decision to say the least, and one that could change the game in a big way.
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