Facebook's Social Chaos Problem

I have been in awe of the new possibly-Twitter-killing Facebook redesign. What Facebook has done with FBConnect, Public Pages and the new home page opens up whole worlds of possibilities to the rest of the web. Facebook Apps were a bummer -- you could do all the work, take on all the dynamic interaction infrastructure and Facebook ended up with all the traffic. Now the world opens up for all of us to interact with social networks in a completely new way.

But the new home page is starting to tumble away into a social chaos. I'll give it to Facebook -- I check my Facebook front page regularly now where I used to check in only to approve new friend requests or see photos.

Sometimes software really benefits from not having transparent rules. Google's pageranking is probably the best example of this. If we all knew exactly how it worked, it would be gamed immediately and destroyed. How does something make the front page of Digg exactly? Those algorithms need to be guarded like they the briefcase in The Spanish Prisoner.

But the way that a message is chosen to reach my home page in Facebook is also obscured. And that's not the right time to obscure a thing. Essentially, like Google's pagerank abstractly explains itself, Facebook is trying to reach me with the people they think I'll care most about. Twitter has the advantage in this case of being completely up front about who gets what and how. It's evolving as it becomes a "Twitterverse" but everyone basically had to know the rules to show up to the party.

Does everyone realize how this new Facebook is working?

Quick Poll

Do you like the new Facebook?

Yes! It's Amazing

No, It's Horrible

I'm Undecided

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

I'm a big fan of chaos. I tend to thrive on it and admire the moments where success comes out of it. But Facebook's new home page may be too insane.

It's getting awkward. I'm hesitant to post anything to my status or publish anymore. Its going to be broadcast out to 145 people who I all know and who didn't initially sign up to hear me all that much.

When you are thinking about conversation and sharing, the size of a group is disproportionately important to the dynamics. And the context for how everyone in the group arrived is as important. If you throw a dinner party and only after dessert reveal that you actually want everyone to talk politics or to see your vacation photo slideshows, its a little freaky.

So as I read the status messages, I get the feeling that half of the people broadcasting have no idea I'm reading this. I think they imagined it a bit differently -- my gut guess is that they thought only people going to their wall would get their latest broadcast. But its all in our home page, and every comment is broadcast out. Some things seem they should have been whispers -- comment replies meant for one friend but that unknowingly are heard by most everyone they ever knew.

I get the feeling its going to Friendster-ize on them as the quiet people on Facebook start to mock the twitterati who are flocking to their new loudspeaker.

I don't mean this to buzzkill any one from sharing their hearts out. And honestly, I'd rather have some companies explode to new heights while we're going through the greater depression. But I wonder if this all is really going to work out for Facebook.

A couple years ago the buzz of everybody's parents joining Facebook was the big conversation. Now we're talking about the grandparents. This is amazing, and good. It reminds me of how the zocalo works in Mexico, or the plaza in Spain or piazza in Italy. Everybody goes there -- its like the nice part of a wedding but every weekend evening. Match.com filled that vacuous void for post college singles in this country, some way to meet each other. Facebook has filled the larger void behind it, the result of tens of thousands of cultures thrown together in the US.

But Facebook is going to have to figure out how to make gossip work in this new zocalo they've created. Because if you returned home from an evening in the zocalo to find out that everything everyone said was written down and broadcast to the rest of everybody -- disaster!

I don't want Facebook to just roll back to their previous state. But how can they evolve this to the right place? They risk burning their smaller percent of core users and thought leaders by leaving them out to be mocked by the rest of us quietly watching.

Quick Poll

Will Facebook Continue It's Growth Rate

Yes, users will complain while opening it 10 times a day and obsessing

No, Facebook reached its peak and is making serious mistakes

I Pendulum Swing and Can't Decide

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

I'm interested in hearing your ideas, not as complaints for the old Facebook, but for predictions of what Facebook will do to evolve their new home page in the coming weeks and months.

Comments

[Budokan]

Facebook has become Twitter Lite. If I wanted to Twitter I would Twitter.

http://kennethmarkhoover.com

[diva555]

Every time you make a comment it becomes your status. So you might say, on purpose for your status...a music recommendation or a vacation you are taking and when you will be back, but then if you wish to make a simple comment (often in answer to something being discussed) and put it in the share box, such as "I agree with Jane, not Bill", this becomes your status, which no one understands, and erases your prior status. Just one of a thousand problems. It was great to have Live Feed, News Feed, and Status updates on tabs...and have Live Feed in small font, for alot of trivia, like which of the your friends have new friends, their updates, etc., and have News Feed for your important or intentional statements which may be commented on. This font now is too large and in your face and should be smaller but not as small as Live Feed. The comment button is gone so if you want to initiate any comment it becomes your status. The highlights on the right are full of ads but it might be nice to have a save feature on events you hear about or music recommendations, to put in the highlights to be constantly reminded of something on which you are possibly taking action. Some of the quizzes are down right insulting such as a poll asking how many people think "so and so" is attractive. People have left facebook over this.

[overcat]

An FB friend sent me this, for those who dislike all the app info about your friends on their homepage:

I found the following item in the FB help section, written by one Oscar Bartos (thanks, Oscar).

"I have only found one way - which is to go to the application page and click the "Block this Applicatio­n." It will give you a warning that asks if you're sure. SAY YES. Pay no attention to the warning about how supposedly you'll still hear from the app if a friend has it installed - this will remove the app and related activity from your news feed. The only downside to this technique is that you have to do it for every app."

Now, the way to you get to the application's page is as follows:

1. Click on the blue-highlighted application name in the post you don't want to receive any more of.

2. The next page will ask you to allow the application to have access to your information. Do not allow access. Instead, find where the application's name is highlighted again in blue. Click that instead.

3. Click the "Block this application" button as Oscar advises. Also ignore the warning that you will not achieve what you want by doing this. It works.

I've tried this, and the unwanted posts do appear to be removed from the News Feed on my homepage.

[LillianB]

The previous Live Feed functioned the same way - except that one could there prioritize between which friends and which kind of updates were the most important to you. So I, not being interested in silly tests like "who are you in (insert tv series here)?" could eliminate these and instead get the status updates from people I really care about in my feed. No longer can. I could, too, say that "this friend is more important to me than that one", and get more from his or her activity in my feed. So I did prefer the old layout to the new, which doesn't sort through things like that - you can shut people off from your feed, but you can't say that you find status updates (saying something real about people) more important than silly applications.

[gradLady]

I would suggest that they adjust their new site to stop posting my friends' wall postings to each other. I don't care what they say to one another on the wall, I am just interested in their status updates and their link postings. A lot of folks don't understand that some of the things they say really need to be said in a message, and not in a public posting on the wall. There is no way to shut this feature off without eliminating status updates from a person as well.

People keep criticizing twitter, but you know, I prefer it right now. I can see the status updates without the ads, the wall-to-wall postings, and "which president are you?" results. really, who cares? Many of us are contemplating using twitter only and crashing our FB accounts due to minutiae overload.

[Jess Tsang]

The new set-up is pretty similar to the old "news feed" so it shouldn't be that much of an adjustment, surely? You still have the option of not viewing certain people's activity (ie. those that seem to do every quiz available or add every application).
There was a huge uproar when Facebook changed the layout not so long ago, but people seem to have gotten over that.

[Burnsey]

Yea, there over it, except for the 576,990 members who have joined the MEMBERS WANT THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK! group that has only been up for the past week. And that's only ONE of the hate the new design groups they have active.

The best option would be to create a filter that allows the user to only get the updated Status comments while leaving the back and forth between other users unviewable unless you view that persons wall. I only recently became a member of facebook, and have stopped visiting it as often as i had because of the new design and way too much information that interfers with my ability to see the stuff I want...

[LillianB]

That kind of filter is exactly what I'm missing, and the old Live Feed had that.

[Buffyboy]

What's Facebook?

[Merin]

Previous former tech-fad. Supplants MySpace, has been replaced by Twitter. Something new will come along in a year or two.

[Halsey]

:-).....Bu­ffy...you took MY line.....g­lad I'm not alone.....­and I don't twitter or tweet...I was using a computer before most people (I worked as a secretary at a DARPA think tank research facility tied to USC)...I remember (this was back in 1980!....w­hen my boss...bra­iniac Ph.D. mathematic­s...."e-ma­iled" me from a conference in Austria...­there was NO public use of this "means of communicat­ion"....(I should have bought microsoft at 30 cents!...d­amn)...but­...I so don't care about the Facebooks, et al.....I'm not THAT old...and have been "invited" to be a friend by older people than I...and declined..­..as I truly don't get it..course­..I don't get needing to talk on a cell phone in the check out line..or texting that I'm on my way to Macy's....­..guess I'm a dying breed...wi­th no friends...­except those I see in the flesh.. now THAT might make a good movie....t­wilight zone type...so.­.Buffy....­wanna be my friend?

[iowa to sanfran]

I am tech-savvy San Francisco Gen-Xer who has no desire to join Facebook. The whole thing feels like a protracted high school reunion. Nice to see that there are others in my tribe.

[jennylens]

Facebook deactivated me, allowed obviously fake poster to steal my photos, ignoring my Notice of Claimed Infringement. I found online posts people traveling could not meet with peeps cos contact info kept from them. Or no access to the posted travel photos.

After second NOCI, Facebook admitted thought I was an imposter! My ID is cover of my published photo book, my name prominently displayed on cover. Photos watermarked w/name. They either use auto s/w or idiots and put me through hell.

Same time as furor over who owns content on Facebook. Facebook or anyone won't make much money from our work. Not allowing us access to our emails, contact info or photos (with no backup), is much larger issue.

PRIVACY: most Facebook users CLUELESS re privacy settings. Photos are separate settings! IF you accept ANY apps, YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS ARE USELESS. Can't turn off getting apps which clutter profile. I can't read about my friends because of all the gifts, apps, lists, games, crap.

I wanted to use Facebook to build my web consulting biz. Amazing to connect with people I photographed. One performer using a shot in new CD. Another no idea my photo of him opens a major new punk book. I cannot continue to deal with Facebook on professional level.

My social life is my professional life. Can't they understand that?

LARGE type and apps. WHO designed this? Why? Invasive, stupid, inefficient. Time for a new PRO social media site! Calling all developers!

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Twitter, Facebook, exercises in distraction and confusion.

[PigsCantFly]

Absolutely right. Where was the option on the polls to vote "I don't care"?

[InternationalObserver]

So my friend, who's really just a Facebook friend, has done a quiz and her results are posted to my Home Page. She didn't tag me but because she's my friend I'm updated on what she's up to (ie the Quiz). And when she's finished doing that quiz she does another ... and another ,,, and another ... and ...

Clearly she has enough time on her hands to do TEN quizzes and I'm updated on all of them... which fills my home page.

I love the new Facebook..­. really, I do. But maybe their magic algorithm should know that something is amiss and not post ALL her quiz results. And if I write on someone's wall it's for them, not my 145 friends...

[ponderingmuch]

You used to be able to make a comment thread "one line"on your profile page. Now either the whole thing shows or you have to delete it forever. That is the worst part.

My silly "update where I am" posts showing up on every single friend's page makes me not want to post any inanities, and the whole point was to post inanities.

You have to hide a whole person on the home page instead of just hiding one post.

All this sucks.

If I wanted Twitter, I'd go to Twitter.

[wagadog]

There needs to be a default privacy setting on applications.

By default, they blort out everything you do to EVERYONE even if all of everything else is as totally private as you can make it.

It's intrusive.

[Yamunation]

It's very easy to go under Privacy settings, and choose people you don't want seeing your status. Also works to block certain people from seeing photos, education info, etc. They won't even realize they are blocked, as they can access your page.

While the new design is annoying, this feature Berry is complaining about, that everyone sees his status, was there before, and could be blocked the same way then, and now.

[Paul Berry - Huffpost Blogger]

Great point!!! This is the type of evolution I'm talking about, instead of moving backwards figuring out what tweaks move it even farther forward. Bringing those privacy settings front and center for users just getting the new page, with an explanation might be one fast step forward.

[InternationalObserver]

Yes 'front & center' would be good. Less savvy computer users don't know/get how to set privacy settings..­.

[lolcopter]

dump them all and get real friends

[jessica23667]

I don't mind the status updates or news feed, but I don't like how the homepage fills up every time a friend uses an application. Half my homepage is now fairies or gifts people send to one another. I've stopped using those applications as a courtesy to my fb friends.