What If You Aren't (yet) My Friend

I suggested in a blog post yesterday that you could read this blog in Facebook. Well I missed a big point with that suggestion.

You can read this blog in Facebook if you are my friend in Facebook, but not if you aren't.

I've taken the approach with Facebook (and LinkedIn) of only accepting friend requests from people I actually know. But there are tens of thousands of readers of this blog who are people I want to have a relationship with but aren't technically my friends.

I've said this before on this blog. We need a second kind of relationship in social networks.I want people to see my profile who aren't actually friends. Maybe fans followers? Or something else?

Comments

[Bosko]

When you click on "privacy" when logged into Facebook (top right corner), you're not presented with a long ass legal document; you're presented with a sophisticated interface for managing your privacy settings.

In particular, look at:
http://www.facebook.com/privacy.php?view=notes
(you need to be logged in)

I think you can change the visibility of your notes there; and I believe your blog is imported in the form of notes.

I haven't played around much with the facebook API, but I believe that an API plugin/application can have similar privacy settings as well so, in the absolute worst of cases, someone could write a blog importer plugin that is richer than Facebook's default Notes and which allows for the complete opening up of your blog within Facebook.

[Adam Kalsey]

This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, here: http://kalsey.com/2006/06/real_social/ and here: http://kalsey.com/2004/02/social_manners/

There's a few problems, and all of them are related to the fact that to a social network, a connection is a connection is a connection. There's no shades, no nuance. In the real world, I place different values on the connections I have. I have friends, family, acquaintances, and neighbors. And the strength of the connections are different between groups, and even within a single group.

Relationships are often fuzzy and codifying the strength of each relationship is difficult. Fred, we've talked via email dozens of times. I'd feel comfortable asking you for a recommendation for a good corporate lawyer. But I don't know you well enough to ask you to pick me up at the airport.

In our daily lives we're making thousands of value calls every time we interact with someone. How we act around them is defined by the strength of our connection to them. What we say, what favors we give and receive, and even what we wear are influenced by our fuzzy notions of how well we know a person.

Social networking tools don't make it easy to solve this problem. They view everyone in one big flat list. To a social network, my wife, my dentist, and someone I worked with three years ago are all the same.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that no social norms have emerged about how to treat people online. Years ago I stopped adding people unless I already knew them well. That works well enough, but it really destroys the opportunities for serendipitous interactions. Since I don't have my next door neighbor as a connection, I can't see that he's looking for a new pool guy, and I can't offer him some help.

I think social network tools will evolve to support grouping of contacts into more natural networks. Maybe they'll even offer the ability to automatically determine what groups someone belongs in based on how you interact with them. Then controls will emerge that let you control who's allowed to see certain information, and who should see it by default. This is sort of like the privacy tools that Facebook, Vox, and others offer, but with a twist.

Instead of simply controlling whether information is accessible by "friends," "family," or "public" these tools will give fine-grained control over how information is distributed. My business contacts don't need to know that I'm looking for a contractor to do some work on my house. I don't mind if they know this, and there's no reason for me to block their access to it, but I don't need to clutter their inboxes with this tidbit.

I've rambled enough here, I think. I have my own blog, so I should probably put long dissertations there instead.

[Stephen L. McKay]

Fred,

“Open the door and let em’ in” (if you remember that one, you and I are probably around the same age)!
I have issues with privacy too, thus no linkdin, face book, etc., but this may all change (Allen & Co still does not have even a static web site, but that is just crazy in my opinion) as I review the benefits and pitfalls of going “too public”. You, however, have made this choice, and as such, we, your “fans” if you will, are interested in learning more about you.
You should not balk when the list price of your previous home is published. You, after all are not bragging (it‘s others that publish the data), but it does serve as an inspiration to many to know what is possible if one has what it takes, and applies it in their daily lives. Besides, I’m not sure on this, but I believe it’s possible to ban a potential “friend” who may be looking more like a stalker or some other type of unsavory character.
I would say that if I were in your shoes, and loved the social aspect of the internet as much as you appear to, I would follow Paul’s advice and “Let em’ in”.

[Tom W.]

Actually, they're members of your blog's community - you're the driver, but the blog would be bubkis without your community members.

[Kendal H]

Although the suggestion above is to go through EVERY new contact and choose what they can see (you can limit whoever you want from whatever you want), if a stranger adds you, you can check off "this person can only see my limited profile" when accepting the friend request. As long as you have set a generic limited profile in your account, you are set. Maybe you just want them to see your profile and your notes (blog). Or whatever! The freedom is yours

[George Nimeh]

Fans?

Jeezuz Fred, get over yourself.

The idea of network levels or controls is interesting (and already exists in places), but the way you've worded it is incredibly pretentious.

~G~

[Peluka]

"Fans" like in MyBlogLog, or "Followers" like in Twitter are great ideas for that kind of situation.
Reciprocity is not the rule. Perhaps you write and read, but your follower just reads. Perhaps you both write, but he's interested in what you say and you are not. Perhaps I can read your language but you can't read mine.

[Ric]

George - I think Fred uses the expression "fans" because some of the social networks use that term (del.icio.us and MyBlogLog for example) for people who are reading your output, but you are not reciprocating. This is a very coarse implementation of the categorisation that a lot of us would like to see extended.

[Patrick Lee]

We already do that on our site [alive not dead]. A social network based in Hong Kong targeting Asian artists, aspiring artists, and their fans. Users and artists can friend or fan each other and the separation is exactly how you described.

[Sean Ammirati]

I agree with Peluka I think Twitter followers is a very interesting model.

[Jill]

I liked what Adam K. had to say about differing levels of
relationships. Why can't those varying relationships be replicated in social networks? Couldn't there be categories with different filters? Fred, why limit it to just 2 levels, with 'fans' being the lowest entry point? ( I am not a techie, just learning!)

[DV Henkel-Wallace]

Fred, what's the point of doing the blog in facebook anyway? You currently have your own blog which is your own data and it's not dependent on someone else's infrastructure (well, typepad's but you could unwind from that relatively trivially were you so inclined); rather it just links into it (e.g. via widgets _you_ add. Facebook and that ilk invert that relationship, to your detriment and their gain.

Remember those horrible years on the PCs with all that "roach motel" software that you checked your data in and then it was silo'd up? Why do you want that back?

[Michael Hoffman]

What struck me was the "tens of thousands" of readers. I guess with the "fan" thing it just sounded really big. (I feel like yours is a more intimate community for some reason.) Is this based on a Feedburner number? On Technorati you are listed twice, once as http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc
and once as just
http://avc.blogs.com/
Your rank is either 880 or 627, or maybe it's much higher but they somehow have you split in two. Michael Arrington has 400k listed on his blog at the moment, but he is ranked 7 and his authority number (links to his blog)is 10x yours, so maybe that would mean /10 readers, which would give you 40k, and so the tens of thousands makes sense... So, uh... that's great.

And maybe if we have commented enough for you to get to know us then maybe you would feel more comfortable with the "friend" thing, as opposed to the tens of thousands of lurkers.

[Jonathan]

How about bluddies or bliends :-)

Family
Friends
Online Buddies

Distinguishes the differences fairly well - for me at least.

[Stephen L. McKay]

Tens of thousands, or two! I'm one!

[Stephen L. McKay]

I love freds blog, but I do see some points to the comments. We used to call these people "Name droppers". I like to check Fred's twitter, but my good lord, between who he saw at the breakfast table last week, and who he sat pool side with out on LI, I expepected the Queen of England to be up for a photo op next!
Love the blog, love Pincus, and his great dog! Prayers were said for him!, Talk more about these things, and less about who you
know.
Odf course I'll read you either way...

[James]

The gradients will come. The Facebook application platform will allow for their emergence. Social networks are like cities - they fail if designed, but thrive if they are allowed to come to life with tiny, democratic steps.

[Hockeydino]

Friend with benefits!

errr....ok maybe not.

[Dawn]

I've never liked the catch-all "friends" either. My cartoon site has admired artists, admired bloggers, friends/peers, business prospects, and fans.

[jackson]

I can tell you that I will not be your friend, not if I have to continue joining services, typing my email address in more boxes, and figure out how to use more on-line apps. It's way too much already.

Nope I'm out. E-mail, and blogs - that's it, and if you text me with a question that requires more than a one word reply, your gonna get a phone call.

[John Dodds]

I think this highlights how different age-groups approach this catch-all called social networking.

The initial Facebook/MySpace majority use these sites to maintain contact with their real-life/physical social network. They don't use them to expand it.

As people get older, I think social networking has more to do with the business sense of networking, hence the bigger numbers involved.

Just as in real-life, I'm not sure the two can be intermingled.

[Mo]

I am sorry but I really don't understand this "hype"/move towards Facebook system. What is wrong with your current blog?
-Mo
Follower

[simon]

what about groupies .. can avc have groupies ... ?? :)

[Andrew]

Wow, "Maybe fans/followers?" really puts me off. I have been abandoning some blogs lately because I feel like at some point lots of folks sort of run out of useful things to say.

I am glad Fred still is in touch enough with the cutting edge of the web to have cool things to say, but I would consider myself a little less a "fan" after that one...

Anyway, I would prefer audience... or something of that ilk.

Andrew

[Robert Williger]

I agree that in the long term we are going to need to better define the relationships used on social networks. Personally, I view some of the social networks different from others. For me, LinkedIn is much more for business associates and networking. Very understandable why someone like you wouldn't want to be linked with a bunch of random people as they will all be trying to contact you for venture deals. However, Facebook seems to be geared much more towards social apps.

The other question would be if you don't want your blog readers as part of these networks why are they linked on the side of the blog.

While social networking is in it's infancy and we will need to define relationships for the long term; what is the downside of letting some non traditional friends into your world.