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Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

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Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#41

Post by WesleyJohnson »

Incredibly informative presentation. It helped visualize and conceptualize things I was already doing, like occasionally restricting my status updates to certain people: e.g. when I complain about my living situation and don't want those I'm living with to see it or when I hesitate to post a crude joke because I don't want my mom to see it.

I would suspect that to build something that comes close to matching our offline social networks you would have to start from the ground up, but I also think Facebook is in a position to offer some of the benefits.

One thing I would love to see? When I write a status update, post a photo or note, share a link, etc - I would like Facebook to tell me how many can see it. Just as LinkedIN can tell me how many people are in my network, Facebook could easily tell me that this photo marked "friends only" will be visible to my 128 "friends", but this status update marked "friends of friends" will be visible by ~15,000 people. Similarly, in Debbie's case, when viewing other people's photos, Facebook could tell her: your friends can see this photo and offer her tools to disallow that. Just because the Gay Bar employees allowed "friends of friends" to see their photos and I'm friend, doesn't immediately mean I want my friends to see them or see that I commented on them. I think Facebook could tackle these scenarios given the structure they already have.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#42

Post by Timothee »

mattmanser wrote: post #32
spiffworks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nobody wants to present their users with a gigantic list of contacts on first login and ask them to sort and organise them into groups. Instead, everybody just lumps all the contacts together so that the user is least inconvenienced at first, only to later experience problems. Google is in a pretty good position to tackle this, since a fair number of people who already have Google contacts probabl…

You sort your contacts in gmail? I honestly would never bother, really don't see the point. I very much doubt Google are, but Facebook might be in a good position to figure this out themselves now anyway. If I'm friends with Em, Bob, Barry and Jill, and Em and Bob are friends and Barry and Jill are friends, the friendship groups are fairly obvious aren't they? Obviously I've never seen their data so don't know, but I…

Facebook goes further than the mutual friendships and takes into account all sorts of interactions like "Like"'s, comments, etc. and probably re-sharing of contents, common events, common pictures, common places... I've been told they use that to figure out what to show you in your feed, so pretty much to know whom of your FB friends you're actually interested in.

But I'd be very surprised if they don't use that in a "group" perspective as well. Which would be very interesting because groups evolve over time but you going back to clean up your lists doesn't happen very often, if ever.

From a privacy standpoint, it is a bit scary. But it's very cool from a tech/CS point-of-view.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#43

Post by j_baker »

sethg wrote: post #28
csallen wrote: post #6

>> If your privacy practices aren't transparent, then you introduce doubt. Doubt leads to lower usage. So true. Too many apps and services don't understand that as users, when we see "Connect to Facebook/Twitter", our minds are immediately filled with doubt and mistrust. Why? Because we want control over what our friends see about us, and we suspect your app doesn't give a shit and will shamelessly promote itself at…

Some friends of mine had posted, on Facebook, the results of some online autism-spectrum awareness test they had taken—or rather, the test app had posted their results and a link to its own page. So I followed the link, and the first thing I got was a dialog box asking me to give the app permission, not just to post to my wall, but to access my private Facebook information. I declined. I will assume that my attention…

"I will assume that my attention to boundary management proves that I am not autistic. The jury is still out on the authors of that app."

Maybe I'm being overly PC, but two things:

1. Lack of boundary management is more of an issue of antisocial personality disorder or narcissism, not autism as far as I know.

2. Don't use autism as an insult.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#44

Post by bkbleikamp »

FiddlerClamp wrote: post #38

Strange. I figured that Facebook handled this by default. If I make a comment on Friend A's status or post, and Friend B is my friend but not a friend of A, I assumed that Friend B could see neither A's post or my comment. That's a pretty big hole...

It depends on the privacy setting for the status/post.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#45

Post by grandalf »

robryan wrote: post #27
three14 wrote: post #7

Has anyone made an effort yet to do the evident thing, and simply build a social service that lets you have separate groups of friends for all features?

Pretty much what ycombinator funded "the fridge" tries to achieve. The problem is the best tool is probably a hybrid between full segregation and full connectedness. Problem is that in this kind of territory your application becomes harder for the user who has to think more about who is going to see which piece of content.

Is it really that hard? Why not just let me check the box near "high school" and uncheck the box near "parents' friends"...

Anyone who isn't naive about the implications of a "like" or a comment or a photo in everyone else's news feed will think twice about whether to post at all, which I'd argue uses more cognitive energy than simply opting in the correct group of friends to receive the information.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#46

Post by ralphc »

retroafroman wrote: post #36
ralphc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mitigate this by doing my main browsing in Firefox but always doing Facebook in Chrome, in Incognito mode. No cookie cross-pollination.

I've always considered/wanted to do this, but the bother of having to actually type in my credentials every time and changing my habits has put me off. IIRC, Chrome won't remember my logins/passwords in incognito mode, correct?

I logged in once in regular mode, then I logged out, enough for Chrome to remember the credentials. When I go to Facebook in incognito I get the login page with credentials filled in, I have to click the login button but that's it.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#47

Post by sethg »

j_baker wrote: post #43
sethg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some friends of mine had posted, on Facebook, the results of some online autism-spectrum awareness test they had taken—or rather, the test app had posted their results and a link to its own page. So I followed the link, and the first thing I got was a dialog box asking me to give the app permission, not just to post to my wall, but to access my private Facebook information. I declined. I will assume that my attention…

"I will assume that my attention to boundary management proves that I am not autistic. The jury is still out on the authors of that app." Maybe I'm being overly PC, but two things: 1. Lack of boundary management is more of an issue of antisocial personality disorder or narcissism, not autism as far as I know. 2. Don't use autism as an insult.

Correct, and correct. My apologies.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#48

Post by cmars232 »

awakeasleep wrote: post #8

I really enjoyed this presentation. Aside from all the interesting ways of defining privacy I never thought of before, the implications of the presenter's goal (making everyone happy to use social networking for almost all of their life) struck me the hardest. Let's say some radical changes came about so that almost any reasonable person would feel free to post all their personal data on facebook, knowing that sensit…

I don't think it's paranoia at all. It doesn't even take bad motives, just a lapse of judgment or faulty assumption to ruin privacy -- like Google Buzz integration into GMail.

I think the solution requires more than feel-good policy statements and trust building. And God forbid someone mention legislation.

Ultimately the users need full localized control (hosting, or decrypting) over their private identities, content and social connections. Private groups should be darknets. And it should be as easy as automatic to set up and use. Zooko's Triangle be damned.

Re: Google UX Researcher Explains the Social Networking Gay Bar Problem

#50

Post by rasur »

sundarurfriend wrote: post #13
usaar333 wrote: post #10

Aside: Does anyone else have problems with left/right keys not going to the next slide as normally happens on slideshare? I got a bit annoyed having to use my mouse 223 times.

The entire UI was horrific for me. I had to use full screen since the slide didn't show up fully otherwise, and even in fullscreen Page up/down keys didn't work, arrow up/down keys moved terribly slow (like 1 page/minute slow), and the only way for me to navigate was to use the mouse scroll wheel (or the scrollbar on the right). I'd really like to know if I missed something or it was this way for everyone.

The flash slide viewer is awful.
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