My 2Faced-book, or Facebook2?

I usually start with the premise that whatever we do in the real world can be replicated on the web. So social networking sites are great aren’t they? Human interaction in the real world translates seemlessly to the web, doesn’t it? Not with Facebook. It doesn’t have the ability to replicate the diverse relationships we experience everyday. Break down your daily interactions with people and they can get quite complex. In the real world what we present to others as ourselves changes depending on who we’re talking to. In Facebook, everything posted gets distributed to *all* of our contacts (unless we turn on privacy filters, but that just looks suspect).

It needs some kind of grouping system. Stuart Dredge is right, personally I have ‘work friends’, ‘Uni friends’, ‘school friends’, ‘relatives’ (that particular group breaks down further), ‘long-lost friends’… the list goes on. It’s not that I want to exclude anyone, the fact is, most people will probably thank me for not wasting their time!

My Facebook2 upgrade would ideally include the following:

• I want a different private space for all of these groups.
• I want to be able to choose which groups get which content, I don’t want to repeat myself, it’s got to make my life simpler, not more complex.
• I want Facebook to make this upgraded application Macintosh-simple to use (so I don’t make stupid mistakes).

From what I’ve read, these upgrades are far easier said than done, Nels Wadycki has written a post mentioning Yahoo360‘s attempts to do just that, but with buggy consequences. Also, read the BBC‘s Rory Cellan-Jones on “Are my online friends for real?” where he uses the example of Stephen Fry getting 20+ friend requests per hour, OK he’s found a way around it, but there’s got to be a better option?

Update 17 July 07: I’ve just this minute started looking at Pownce – it does ‘sets’! I’m off to have a play… :)

Posted on Tuesday 17 July 2007.

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