I'm writing an article on Facebook for Feliciter and have spent quite a bit of time on the site recently (er, even more than usual 😉) so I thought I'd update my list of easy ways to improve Facebook.
1. Let users see the list of friend requests that have been sent but not accepted yet or denied. There's a whole strange etiquette, different for everyone, about whether you accept all “add” requests or how you turn someone down (it's an either/or proposition which seems harsh – and which is maybe why they don't provide this information. But my earlier idea about letting you set-up levels of contacts – close friend, acquaintance, idiot from high school who still won't stop bugging me) would allow you to add everyone then internally manage them within your profile.
2. This isn't an issue for me but I wonder if women can enter their maiden name? This would be really useful for finding those elementary and high school friends who have since changed their name (assuming they weren't married in high school of course!) It's not just a gender thing either – people of both sexes change their names because of adoption or for other reasons so this could help you track down that funny looking musical guy from grade six who now goes by “Prince” (not a good example – I know “Prince” really was Prince's real name.)
3. I mentioned this is the comments of my other post but will add it here formally. Facebook could expand the range of options for how you know people, how you met people. For example, I'm getting added by a lot of people from Saskatchewan because I started a group called “Saskatchewan Mafia”. But there's no way to signify that I know these people by common geography and nothing else. “Met Randomly” is partway there but it would be nice to record exactly how you met randomly. Online? At a bus stop? Through a Facebook group (and if so, which one.) At a conference? And so on.
4. Did I mention that I think the groups could be made a lot more useful by feeding their activity into the NewsFeeds? Well, I'm mentioning it again because I think that's a huge step to making the site better. Right now, groups tend to be little more than an extra way to define yourself – I'll join one for a band I like, one for the college I went to and to further show my whimsical sense of humour, one funny one about “If this group gets 10 000 members, Bob will fight a bear” or whatever.
5. The best way to make Facebook better? If you joined! Yes, you. Reading this. I know the number of people reading this blog versus the number of people who I've added in Facebook has a great discrepancy.
I'm calling the article I'm writing for Feliciter “E-mail for the 21st Century” and really, that's what social networking sites like Facebook are becoming. Put aside any stereotypes you have about social networking sites being full of scantily-clad, twenty year old college kids posting pictures of themselves drinking beer (that's MySpace, not Facebook) and just try it out. Signing up is free, you'll likely have an instant network of dozens of people if you're a UWO student/grad/prof, and then just treat it like e-mail – check it daily, every couple days, whatever, and there you go.
If it is a bit of ageism keeping you from signing up (“Oh, that's for kids. I'm too old for that.”), why not look up an article called: Why I Registered on Facebook., By: Lemeul, John, Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 9/1/2006, Vol. 53, Issue 2
It's by a professor who did take the leap and join Facebook. Here's the opening lines of the article:
“Yeah, I did it. I registered for an account on Facebook.com.
I'm sure I protest too much when I say it went against my instincts and
better judgment to do so. Nothing's more embarrassing than a grown-up
trying to be one of the kids. But we can't let the students have all
the fun, now, can we?
A few of my graduate-school colleagues, now
working at other campuses where I rarely hear from them, had already
signed up and pestered me to get in the loop. They had misgivings about
it, too, they assured me, but quickly found that joining led to easy
networking and positive interactions with students.
And for what it's worth, I've had more contact with those far-flung former colleagues through Facebook these last few months than I'd had in years before via e-mail and phone.”
Comments 8
Here's another one I just thought of – you can see information about other people but I don't think there's a way to see just your own activities – comments you've posted, status changes, profile updates – all on one page. That might by handy sometimes to keep track of what you've been up to yourself!
How about being able to join a network (versus a group) of a school that you've graduated from. For example, my Trent address has long since expired, but I'd like to belong to Trent Alumni or just the university as a network. I realize that there are groups out there, but you have to join all of them in order to cast the networking net wide enough. It's kind of a small thing, I guess, I just don't like that I'm known only as “UWO Grad '07” when I identify with and am more partial to my undergrad institution. I don't like how much it's based on your current email address.
And I now have TWO people just sitting in the “request to add” box, not wanting to outright reject them but not having any desire to re-connect or let them in to my world by accepting them – even accepting them with limits. That's how I've solved the camper/staff problem, although it's not a great solution. But any of my Facebook friends who were campers when I was staff can only see my limited profile (for what it's worth). The etiquette thing is a big deal to me, and perhaps is one of the hang-ups of the older generations (of which I am one).
That's a good point – in many ways, a lot of the problems come down to them being too restrictive or being too college focussed (natural, given their roots.) But why can't you add multiple networks? I'd join U of R and UWO if I could. Instead, I have to drop London and add Regina as a sort of workaround.
Tough call on those unhandled invites. I'm sure if you just declined them, it wouldn't likely be a problem since they don't get notification (that's the flip side of my complaint that you can't see rejections and I'm sure that's why Facebook does it.) But there's a chance they'd just keep trying to add you or whatever. So yeah, tough call.
Did you read that professor's article? He talked about a bunch of issues being a person of authority in amongst people he had that authority over. He got a request from a student who he'd never spoken more than 10 words with but did accept it. But another student who failed his class twice (submitting the same shitty papers the second time), he turned down outright.
We talked about this before? What is the model for this new space? A mall like you suggested? A never-stopping weekend festival like I said? A microcosm of high school like he suggests? Something new that none of us know how to define yet?
Big questions which will have more relevance in the years to come, I'm sure. Saw a stat that 18 million people are registered on Facebook and fully half are logging in a daily basis. THAT is an addiction!
I'm excited to read your facebook article Jason!
I joined the Trent network by emailing the alumni office and getting my Trent email turned on. (it's free! I hear some universities charge to get this done.)
My biggest desire is an in-browser chat (like gmail chat) so I can talk to some people instantly if they're online. I would still use messages, the wall and notes… sometimes I just want to talk instantly.
I visited Facebook several months ago and decided to stay away for the same reason I don't have a MySpace account — it seems like a kiddie zone to this old fart. But heck, age is a frame of mind, so I decided to go ahead yesterday and sign up. Good luck with your article. Maybe you have already seen this related post: http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2007/03/08/social_librarians.html. Regards.
Oh, cool! I had no idea you could do that. I'll give them a shout and see (although it's been awhile since I graduated … hopefully there's no time limit). Thanks for the tip.
Well, I'm not sure if they'll take it for sure – I sent in a proposal, they said “send us something” and I guess we'll see if they like it.
That's a brilliant idea for the in-site chat! They're already very focussed on making their site “sticky” (no RSS feeds, having to log-in to read new wall posts and messages) so this would be another way to do this.
I wonder how many people leave a Facebook tab open all day and just reload it regularly? I'm not to that point yet but I do something similar with NetVibes, my RSS reader so that I can quickly check it for updates whenever I want.
Glad to hear you took the plunge, John!
The current draft of my essay is sort of written to try to convince librarians who might have hesitated because of the stereotypes about social networking sites to join and at least try it out.
It won't be for everybody, even if they give it an honest try but the one analogy I saw made sense – Facebook has become just like your phone, fax, e-mail and IM to keep in contact with colleagues, patrons and others.
You want to do a post on the “digital divide” not just applying to our patrons but to many librarians as well?