sarahintampa - Latest Comments in Why Facebook is Failing Me

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Chris Bonney — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:08:23 -0000

Sarah-
I feel your pain and have recently "moved" all my biz contacts from FB to LinkedIn. Many I was connected to on both platforms. It was quite painless to un-friend people actually, though it was time consuming. Here is the message I sent my biz contacts on FB:

Hi. I'm being bold and daring in the new frontier of Web 2.0 and making a
hard line between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'm doing FB personal and LI biz.
It's a grand experiment!

So please don't take the unfriend on FB personally. Let me know what you
think about this idea.

The responses to this were only positive and with completely understanding. Most were envious in fact they hadn't done similar sooner.

It's not too late.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Dennis D. McDonald — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:50:33 -0000

The simpler that social networking systems make the categorization of personal relationships, the harder it will be to map these categories to the real world. Add to that the problem that relationships may be viewed differently based on the context and may change quickly over time, you have a problem that can't be solved with today's simple web based systems. In the short term, the only solution I see is setting up completely separate accounts and dealing manually with the overlap.

The moral of the story is: Online relationships aren't the same as real world relationship. Failing to recognize that fact will lead to trouble.

Dennis McDonald
Alexandria VA
http://www.ddmcd.com

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Robert Payne — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:15:27 -0000

Great post. Needless to say, I totally agree.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Phil Ashman — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:11:16 -0000

It'll be interesting playing around with the new facebook updates to see if this is going to help.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Shey — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:16:30 -0000

I have the same issues. I've created lists with different privacy settings but my biggest beef is that I can't control who sees what content I create, especially imported feeds.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Lorand R. Minyo — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:54:06 -0000

And this is what I've conducted the LinkedBook experiment a while ago: mixing my business network with personal one. Needless to say it failed quite badly.

The results? WE're not quite ready yet to have the same set of values online as we do offline
http://www.lorandminyo.com/...

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

m8ryx — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:35:27 -0000

I've never seen any indication that facebook wants to be a network for professionals. You do have the ability to increase or decrease a person's weighting, but I'm pretty sure that facebook is intended to connect people who know each other in a social manner. I don't have my facebook status updated my twitter because they are two completely different things. I am perfectly happy keeping my facebook personal and (mostly) out of my professional life.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:55:19 -0000

That would be about all I like about Plaxo, too. Ha! :)

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Phil Glockner — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:08:03 -0000

Have you used Plaxo? It has a lot of control over what part of your lifestream you expose to what people. Sadly, that's about the only thing I like about Plaxo. I really wish Facebook had more of that sort of thing built-in as well.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Phil Ashman — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:09:51 -0000

I've been
commenting

about the same thing recently. It is definitely an issue that I believe Facebook has an uphill battle to overcome. I've long had a separate FB account for Business & Friends. Being an instructor I just found it the only way to separate my personal from my professional activities. However even doing this I've yet to see much if any in the way of business activity on FB. I've continued this over into most of my social network circles. However as some of the excellent comments above have mentioned, most people haven't taken the time to be so diligent with their media distribution.

How I handle my social media input seems to be like a torrential rapid lately; spiraling toward finding the most efficient way of handling things. However I think we'll see more applications look to ways of data mining aggregators; similar to Feedly. This has been my latest darling. I've always wanted to love Friendfeed, but it is just too fragmented for my liking. Feedly allows me to hone in on good discussion within Digg and FriendFeed without having to follow too many people in those applications directly. I think the comments to this post are indicative of the fragmented commenting that exists within Friendfeed. There are probably many other people that have reshared this blog in FF and have comments other than those listed in your FF comment section (about 10 according to my Feedly minibar..;)..). However judging by the number of comments posted directly on this blog as opposed to Friendfeed, it seems most people still like to come directly to the source; my preference still.

Let's hope the big networks get this dialed in pronto!

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

seanreiser — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:39:45 -0000

I have to admit that I do some evangelism when I go through this. A tale I tend to tell goes something like this:

"I have a 16 year old niece and I have to have her as a Facebook contact because I don't want to alienate my family. My niece loves to add my contacts because, like most 16 year-olds, she doesn't understand boundaries. My business contacts feel obligated to accept the connection because they worry that I may be offended. This puts me in the potential situation where I'm responsible for her behavior. The last thing I want is for my niece to send the CEO of a client a purple unicorn. So, I use a business network for business and a social network for my social life"

As most of my business contacts have teenage relatives they understand where I'm coming from and often times they will rethink their personal social networking strategy.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Melanie Baker — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:21:08 -0000

One idea that's seized hold of my brain since I started working for a company focused on social engagement info management and measurement is that of "relationship management". It's gotten to the point where it's become obvious that it's not just something we could do as a roadmap project; it's an entirely other company.

I don't know of any site/service/app that does this well yet, and most don't do it at all. But we need it, and as social media becomes ever more mainstream, and living online in general becomes ever more ubiquitous, we're REALLY going to need it. Certainly to manage the intricacies of the interconnectedness between personal and professional lives, but even for things like keeping those who aren't professionally techie safe. Already so many people reveal far more than they know or should, and don't even realize it.

Of course, we're humans, and humans are messy and random and emotional, so a part of most of us will be uncomfortable for some time with the idea of letting algorithms take over aspects of managing our relationships. But it will happen. Look at the divide between what teenagers are willing to post online and what people a couple decades older are willing to post. (And we've long since lost the battle of manually and cerebrally evolving fast enough to keep up with the demands of the technology we've built.)

I think once relationship management tools a) are created and done well, and b) once they come baked into social sites (so you set them up at the same time as you create your profile, for example), they will integrate into our lives, and these days of "manually add names to customized lists" will seem vastly more primitive than they already do. :)

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Cheryl — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:47:31 -0000

Saw your post tweeted. Excellent point. I have no association with (and haven't even started populating my account) but I noted that http://chi.mp is addressing this issue. One can have aspects. Very interesting and I hope to follow up with it. (Social media takes so much time!)

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

.LAG — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:48:05 -0000

yeah, i hear you. i'm cautious of using Facebook for professional/corporate interactions. LinkedIn is purpose-built for that, and again, it's so much cleaner to separate services -- for me at least -- based on subject matter. I have old fraternity brothers posting, well, embarrasing photos from way back in my school days on FB. Now, I know,some of those may leak out, but it's so much easier to just make the decision at the start: FB is for "X", LinkedIn is for "Y", Twitter is for "Z"...and stick to that. Mixing them all together is when it gets confusing. BTW, this doesn't mean that i don't have contacts who are on some or all social networks that I'm involved in. It just means that the way I participate is separated based on the network... i.e. only send resumes and make recommendations on LinkedIn, only post goofy party pix on FB, etc. Again, that's just me, one voice out of millions.
.LAG

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:33:08 -0000

Also, Laurel, the problem I'm lamenting about here goes far beyond the Twitter app - that is merely a piece of the pie...and perhaps not even the biggest one.

The problem is that those who use FB professionally have to engage in 2-way friendships with people they don't really want to follow all that closely but who want to follow them for whatever reason. Eliminating that "random people" noise from your News Feed is a painstaking, manual process that doesn't even let you filter things out using FB's own lists feature - you have to enter in names one-by-one.

In any regard, solving the Twitter sync issue would be putting a band-aid on a big, gaping wound. IMHO, of course.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:22:58 -0000

If I could develop things, I would, believe me!

Wait are you saying I can specify in the FB/Twitter app which Twitter updates sync to which Facebook friends? I'll have to go look at it again, if so.

But I also want it to not sync any replies (Twitter updates beginning with "@") - that should be in the settings too.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:20:56 -0000

Maybe we should start a fan page for "We want one-way friendships!" :)

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:20:23 -0000

Having to create 2 accounts is a big ol' Fail in my book. :)

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:19:16 -0000

I enjoyed yours too! I thought it was funny how we were both thinking about this - it's so crazy when that happens.

I agree with you re: FriendFeed - I find that it's very easy to categorize people into lists. But mostly, it serves a different purpose than Facebook so it's a network where I'm happy to follow everyone and let them follow me.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:17:35 -0000

If LinkedIn was as popular as Facebook, I could see using this approach. But just isn't and that means I have less potential to reach people there.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:16:27 -0000

That's definitely an approach that works, but one that goes against using Facebook professionally - and one of their original incarnations was as a professional network: http://www.insidefacebook.c....

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:14:56 -0000

I'm thinking of disconnecting Twitter, too. But if I did so, then I may as well remove those "random" friends, since the only reason they connected was (most likely) to follow my tech-related status updates.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Courtney Engle Robertson — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:12:16 -0000

This has helped me clarify the same thoughts. On one hand, I want to do business with my friends, but on the other hand - when is enough enough? When I am in person with others, even casually, sometimes business opportunity arises. Many, though, don't even think about "show less of" and just delete. It is a dilemma.

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

LaurelPapworth — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:55:27 -0000

Twitspam is a problem with the Twitter app, not Facebook. The Twitter app hijacks the status update and that's not Facebooks fault. It just sees it as a status update. Take issue with the Twitter app developer, for not giving you control. Also consider that you are bringing behaviour appropriate to one community (Twitter, synch, broadcast) to a different one (Facebook, asynch, gated). That will muck with Purpose, Values, Rituals in the new community.

I mean, you can create a Friends List ("Exceptions") and add those friends to the Exception list. Then tell the Twitter app to not send to the Exception list. But you want to have granular level control of status I think? Outside of the Twitter Facebook app? Perhaps the key is to remember that Facebook is really an operating system - social network operating system - and that you can add a FB app to handle what you want. I think Secret Status does it. if you don't like those, well, go ahead and develop your own. :)

Re: Why Facebook is Failing Me

Luis Antezana (luckylou) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:48:25 -0000

I feel your pain on the Facebook issue, as I get a lot of requests from colleagues, friends, strangers, even family members whom I might accept if I didn't have to also read their updates. I use Facebook's Live Feed, not the News Feed, because it allows me to see all updates from my friends. I had found News Feed too often left out updates I wanted to see, despite setting appropriate prefs. Live Feed is a two-edge sword, since you also see everything from people you don't care as much about, especially because there are no "see less of this person" controls.

As a result, I have been asking Facebook for nearly the same thing as your request for one-way friendships: let us be able to set reverse security settings for groups/friends. This would let me control what I could see of their updates in the same way I can control what they see of mine.

I agree with both .LAG and sreiser in separating professional and personal usage between Twitter/LinkedIn/etc and Facebook, although that might change if I could target specific news feed updates for particular groups, including have defaults set so that status updates from Twitter would only show to professional contacts.

twitter.com/luckylou