

Google researcher says friend groups may give it a window to best Facebook - dyc
http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/07/01/google-researcher-says-friend-groups-may-give-it-a-window-to-best-facebook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat)

======
nerme
“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

Actually, Zuck, that has nothing to do with integrity. I would hope to hell
that there are things that you feel comfortable saying around some people that
you don't feel comfortable saying around other people.

I completely agree with the writer. By having this "all people must act the
same to everyone else at all times" mantra coming down from the top, they are
ripe to be overtaken by another product that simply has at its core the exact
opposite philosophy.

There ARE ways to split people in to groups based just on the social graph. Of
course, you need a very large and almost complete social graph in order for
this type of clustering to be accurate. I'm a huge fan of the linear algebraic
techniques used in network analysis. There is definitely a way to have most of
the hard work done algorithmically, presenting the user with an analysis of
his own social network, lumping people in to suggested groups, for example. It
wouldn't work 100%, as no algorithm is going to properly be able to handle the
subtle nuances of a given individuals rationale for grouping people together,
but it could get very, very close.

You could add further inputs to the clustering mechanism by taking in to
account each node's own reclassification of its social groups. Run the
algorithm, give all the users a generated list of social groups, and as each
user updates and fixes the lists, re-input those updates in to the clustering
algorithm. By giving the nodes in the graph an opinion, the algorithm could be
refined and made to be more accurate when there are future changes to the
graph.

Oh the weeks of fun I could have with access to Facebook's social graph...

~~~
indigoviolet
Are you interested in actually working on it? If you are, send me a resume.

------
martythemaniak
That's a very accurate observation, and there seems to be an opportunity for
Google to make a great social networking product here. Current social networks
are all pretty terrible at solving the problem of different groups of
friends/identities, so people end up using twitter for some stuff, facebook
and linked-in for other.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
That's an excellent point. I know I tend to use Linked-In for professional
networking, and FaceBook _only_ for personal friends. I actually get rather
annoyed when work contacts that I've never associated with in a social setting
try to "friend" me on Facebook.

------
kwamenum86
This sounds good on paper but in practice I think this could be problematic.
There is some value in ambiguity. Segregating friends into a hierarchy feels
like partly a social problem. Sure internally you may maintain such a
hierarchy but what use is there in making it public? Don't you risk hurting
peoples' feelings? What happens if they start off as a work contact and you
become closer? Do you have to move them in a timely fashion or risk being
offended? Seems to raise more issues than it actually solves. Seems like
increasing the complexity of the interface for the social web has never worked
out if the change did not also bring tremendous value e.g. newsfeed gives you
updates on all you friends in one place - more complex but also very useful.
More privacy controls was more complicated but didn't bring nearly as much
value as fb thought it would.

~~~
lftl
I think Facebook has basically gotten the visibility of the hierarchy correct
with their setup of friend lists. I assign my friends to different groups, but
they don't know what groups I've assigned them to.

The biggest things FB needs to change in my opinion are to make it simpler to
post updates to different groups (it's there now but it's clunky), and allow
me to segregate access to my information by group. So for example I can set it
up so that my college friends can see what my college friends write on my
wall, but not what work friends write.

I think there might also be some value in having a somewhat public hierarchy,
like you initially mentioned, but I think that makes more sense on Twitter
than FB. It'd be nice if Twitter let me have explicit topic-based channels for
me to publish to, and for people to subscribe to. So I could subscribe to some
people's programming related tweets without hearing about what they ate for
breakfast.

------
JohnnyBrown
Remember when facebook introduced the option to show limited profiles to
certain people? I liked the concept but it was clumsy to use and it was clear
to the other party what I was doing.

In fact, the reason I switched to facebook originally was it looked like a
myspace for just my school friends.

Getting this right would be a big selling point for me.

~~~
wake_up_sticky
It definitely should not be clear to anyone what category (close friend,
friend, coworker, acquaintance, etc) you place them in. Just like, in the real
world, you don't automatically know whether I consider you a close friend or
just a coworker unless you ask me.

------
naner
This does seem obvious, but managing several groups of friends on the computer
screen seems like it would be cumbersome and possibly confusing. The
implementation has to be pretty damn good for this to work well.

Especially considering that many Facebook users are not very computer
literate. (Remember the ReadWriteWeb/Facebook login fiasco?)

------
amalcon
Wouldn't, you know, owning the world's largest search engine be a bigger
factor? Imagine if you googled "Bob Smith", and the first result to come up
was the Bob Smith _you actually know_?

~~~
Raphael
Facebook does this.

~~~
amalcon
How? Does Google have your Facebook login cookie?

~~~
Raphael
No Google. When you search on Facebook, it shows people local to you at the
top.

------
c1sc0
Let's hope this feature makes it in Diaspora, then! Given how Google botched
the Buzz launch with privacy issues, I'm not expecting too much from GOOG.

------
ja27
"One teacher the company interviewed, for example, realized that photos of her
with her close friends at a gay bar were being exposed to her 10-year-old
students."

Why are the 10-year olds on Facebook (violating COPPA)? More importantly, why
is the teacher Facebook friends with her 10-year old students?

~~~
bbatsell
That doesn't violate COPPA if they have their parents' permission.

~~~
ostso
At any rate it violates Facebook's terms (<http://www.facebook.com/terms.php>,
4.5): "You will not use Facebook if you are under 13."

------
aresant
Lots of what's in that presentation could be applied to more intellegent
sorting of contact "authority" to build something truly useful in the email
space.

We inherently know when looking at an incoming email how important / timely it
is to respond - in my personal experience a huge part of it is related to the
sender.

