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The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

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Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#21
post #6

It seems to me the problem is that his 'friends' aren't really friends at all. He lists 'Robert Scoble' as a friend? He's a news source... he's going to have thousands of 'friends' that aren't really his friends.

That is the author's point as I read it. Once again Facebook's limited notion of social relationships creates a poor (and sometimes creepy) user experience. The Facebook model works great at college, kinda just after, and then not so much.

> Facebook's limited notion of social relationships creates a poor (and sometimes creepy) user experience

That's the thing I kind of wonder about every time there's a discussion related to Facebook here - I personally can't see neither the "limited notion of social relationships" nor a "poor/creepy user experience". I'm curious where that difference of perception comes from.

> Facebook model works great at college, kinda just after, and then not so much.

I had an exactly opposite experience. While in college, I didn't need to use Facebook much, because I'd see my friends pretty much everyday on/between/after lectures. But now, as I my day bouncing between work, familiy and a local Hackerspace, I find myself having 90% of my social life channeled through Facebook - there's simply no easier way to talk and share information with people you want to stay in touch with, living in different cities, with different work schedules and family responsibilites.

Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#22

I refer to Facebook's "People You May Know" feature as "People I Hate." For some of them, Facebook is quite right--I do know them. And I don't want to be friends.

I laughed at this comment. For me, it's also "people I once knew, but now, it would be weird to friend them"

Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#24
The only way I use "Friends of Friends" on facebook is for setting a post's audience so the grandmothers can share the grandkid photos I post with their circles of friends. Pity I can't set this from the Android app (Facebook, are you listening??).

Anyways, like the author I'm not much interested in what my Facebook friend's friends are doing.

Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#25
It doesn't matter that "friends of my friends are not my friends" for Jelly. Jelly isn't a social network, no matter how it is being marketed. It is much closer to Quora than it is to Facebook. Whether there is a market for what it actually is, is an entirely different question. The reason for going 2 degrees is simply so it isn't a ghost town at launch. The questions being asked aren't things that it matters if the person is your friend or not.

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, it could be simply everyone on Jelly as opposed to just my twitter followers and it would only make it better by extending the people that see the question I want answered. I suppose I could just follow obama or beiber or something on twitter to get effectively the same reach.

Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#26
post #24

The only way I use "Friends of Friends" on facebook is for setting a post's audience so the grandmothers can share the grandkid photos I post with their circles of friends. Pity I can't set this from the Android app (Facebook, are you listening??). Anyways, like the author I'm not much interested in what my Facebook friend's friends are doing.

You remind me of a frustration I have with. Urrent facebook UI.

I only ever share posts either publicly or to a named small group. ("Photos of Bob").

It's gently frustrating that the list for sharing is populated with auto-generated groups that I have never, and will never share things with, and that getting to "photos of bob" takes extra clicks.

Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#27

I refer to Facebook's "People You May Know" feature as "People I Hate." For some of them, Facebook is quite right--I do know them. And I don't want to be friends.

For me it's "people who I have no idea who they are but they might have looked at my profile once by accident or something".

Re: The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends

#30
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the author's point as I read it. Once again Facebook's limited notion of social relationships creates a poor (and sometimes creepy) user experience. The Facebook model works great at college, kinda just after, and then not so much.

> Facebook's limited notion of social relationships creates a poor (and sometimes creepy) user experience That's the thing I kind of wonder about every time there's a discussion related to Facebook here - I personally can't see neither the "limited notion of social relationships" nor a "poor/creepy user experience". I'm curious where that difference of perception comes from. > Facebook model works great at college, k…

The way I was using it is that I have many different social interactions, from people whom I've grown up with and known all my life, to people who happen to ride the same train I do when they commute and prefer the same car. There are a lot of differences between how I might interact with the former and the latter, and what I might share with them.

At one level they are both 'friends' (as defined to be 'not unknown', 'not threat') but my buddy from Junior High is a 'lifetime friend' and the person on the train is 'a friendly person who rides the same train I do'.

In today's connected world, both of them might want to be 'friends' on facebook. In my actual life they are 'different' kinds of friends. And of course that friendship changes over time, I may develop a deeper relationship with the person who rides the train, I may drift apart from my childhood friend, but none of the subtleties are expressible in the vocabulary of 'friendness' on Facebook.

I've chosen to link with social friends on Facebook and people with whom I've worked professionally on LinkedIn, but I don't generally 'LinkIn' with friends who I'm not going to interact with in a professional context, nor 'friend' on Facebook people for whom I would not feel comfortable inviting over to share a beer by the fire pit and discuss comparative theology.

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