http://metricsman.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/how-much-does-a-house-cost/

/via @baekdal @donbart

Joel

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

However, the *new* Facebook groups has piqued my interest...

One thing I always struggled with Facebook was this: ALL your friends could see ALL your updates. If you wanted to get into the "show x update to these friends" or "show y update to these friends" then you had to set up "lists" and get mired in the mind boggling complexity of the publisher tools privacy settings.

During yesterday's FB live stream Mark Zuckerberg admitted that only 5% of users go to the trouble of creating lists; and who knows what percentage of those actually customise the privacy tool?

So whilst I LIKED lists and loved the latitude of the publisher privacy tool I was clearly in the minority. After all, what was the point of me crafting a privacy 'channel' only for the recipient/audience to have no idea how to respond in like. That would be like transmitting in 2048 bit encrypted traffic only to have responses sent back in plain text.

...Which is what I like about new groups!

I have some very old friends who are scattered across the globe; Charlottesville USA, Toulouse France, Vietnam etc etc.

And these are friends who I can have completely daft conversations with. So daft that I wouldn't want it in my main stream as it would not make any sense to 'outsiders'; 'outsiders' would not have the frame of reference needed to understand the context of the information. Eg, when my brother & I get up to full speed our exchanges are meaningless without the Rosetta Stone of our shared experience.

It's not about wanting to "hide" updates - it's about wanting them to be corralled for relevancy.

The new groups work perfectly for this 'use case' & I've already set up my secret group called "the idiots" and quickly invited (sorry, included!) my friends - we were up and running in no time.

So, what do I like about groups?

1) It's slick & clear. It took me 2 mins to set it up.

2) The comment thread updates in a very "friendfeed" like manner (someone adds a comment to a thread? Thread bubbles up to top of feed - afaik this is different to native FB feed behaviour)

3) It's closed. You can't share - everyone knows the boundary (or perhaps you can with a 'public' group?)

4) You have fine grained controlled over the notifications you receive from groups - even down to group level.

5) (extending on from the above), you can "unsubscribe" from notifications about updates of a thread. Again I don't think you can do this in the "normal" FB feed.

6) Group chat - superb! Need I say more?!

7) Email interaction - comment notifications can be replied to; updating the group.

What don't I like?

1) I love the fact each group has an email which can be posted to BUT it's a shame you can't also attach photos etc. Hopefully they'll address this.

2) I'm currently not bothered than anyone can "include" me in a group but perhaps this would change if that group was called "World's Biggest Arseholes". Perhaps we need a greater granularity of acceptance/inclusion controls here?

3) Groups seem to be pretty hidden on my homepage in Facebook. How can I make them more front and centre? Need to be able to bring fave groups to foreground.

So, as you can see I'm pretty happy with groups :)

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Facebook (FB), and they are the easy arse to kick here, was born out of a vacuum where this deeper understanding of 'friends' did not exist - you were either 'friends' with someone or not. FB have tried to address this evolving situation with "lists" (allowing you to segment your friends) and advanced privacy options on the publisher tool (controlling which "lists" see what update) - but it's a bt clunky.

Whilst developments such as "lists" etc are welcome, they are not enough. Too often FB users are posting content to a wider audience than intended or having content shared to a wider audience than intended.

FB simply does not (yet) have the plumbing to deal with this elegantly. Perhaps also they do not have the incentive - after all - they can make more off our backs when our data is as open as possible - a classic fox guarding the chickens situation.

The "new wave" of social networking tools will hopefully be built from the ground up understanding the complexity and shades of grey of social networking "friends" - content needs to be firewallable (now there's a word!) and it's privacy level/shareability level needs to be obvious to all. Complex? Yes. Too complex to be solved? No...we put a man on the moon (and don't say otherwise!).

Very interesting times ahead for Facebook etc!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

 Facebook just got so damn bloated with all the junk they thought we wanted (vampires?!)...but most sane people didn't ("just give me status updates, comments and tagged photos please").

 I just didn't understand Facebook any more - so many options, so many things you could do, so many "settings" areas. Damn! I just wanted a closed area for me and my friends!

 It's no surprise to hear of Facebook lite. They are obviously well aware of the "bloated problem" and aware of the streamlined usefulness of Twitter and FriendFeed. Can they wean hard core FB users off these bloated features though?

 Perhaps they don't have to...

 Think of this. Facebook is essentially a faceless API with the facebook front end sat on top of it. Why not create a different frontend and interact with the API differently? Voila! Facebook lite! Different users with different needs (ie the idiots who want to send me a vampire/banana/goat etc) can interact with FB in a way that suites them.

 Sounds like the best of both worlds to me :)

 Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

 I typically use FB to stay in contact with a small circle of close friends. I tend not to muck around with the applications as I typically interact with FB via the simple (and now in considerable need of an update) FB Blackberry app (v1.3, 1.5 is meant to be much improved and just around the corner).

 The facelift to FB was ok with me - I prefer the stream of comments etc.

 One thing I don't like in the FB timeline summary (as opposed to how FF do it - these guys appear to be the source of many of the best features!) is that if you comment on a status update it does not go back to the top of the list; which it should in my mind as is the comment atleast is a very recent update.

 The other killer thing I like about FB is the photos and sharing - very slick.

 With FB I've never really got my head around if I can segregate my friends etc - you seem to be able to create groupings but I don't know how this affects your status updates. I.e. there are things I'd quite happily say to my brother which shouldn't really be visible elsewhere!

 I like the concept of "life streaming" as I really want to know what my friends are up to (primarily) with the ability to comment back and forth. FF seems to be very good at this for two reasons: 1) ability to create closed rooms (twitter doesn't have this but it does in Japan I think?) 2) IM access - I can interact with FF intuitively via a variety of sources including instant messenger (this used to be part of twitter - perhaps it'll be back again one day as they sort their infrastructure out)

 Twitter I'm playing with as I think it's a good way to interact with people I don't already know (as opposed to the more close way I use FB). The search is very interesting!

 If FB carry on evolving (aka nicking stuff from FF) then that might swing it for me but how long will FB be around? Aren't they burning a $1,000,000 a month on their web server electricity bill alone? How long can THAT go on for? What's the point in serving 200 million users if you're making no money? Are they just winging it so that as the medium evolves they'll evolve their billing model to fit with it? Online advertising with FB seems to be not doing the trick for them (do we never learn with this?!)

 Very interested in how other people are using these apps.

 Also, do you think FB will be the big player in 3-5 years time? I doubt it...

 It made me think that yes, companies react to negative PR on the web now but is that to do with the novelty of the medium (eg Twitter)? How would this social opinion on the web help form my opinion if (say) if had to choose a trans atlantic flight? I mean I could search twitter (great fun in itself!) or (and perhaps more relevant) search the greater fun http://cursebird.com for references to BA and Virgin.

 Gut feel is that there will be complaints about both parties (people like to complain a lot more than they do to praise). Most of who I will not know.

 This then falls into the same distrust I have for reviews on websites where everything is either 5 stars ("it's great!") or 1 star ("it sucks!"). I smell a rat and, therefore, I do not give it equal (any?) weighting with other inputs when forming my decision.

 What will change this though is social meta data - knowing the opinion of my friends (and their trusted friends) is much more important because we are dealing with a web of trust - in short the "opinion mass".

 Imagine visiting Amazon etc and you have the option to see only product reviews from people 'n' hops from you in your circle of friends (facebook/twitter and next gen apps). This could be a pretty big audience and the content could be that more trusted.

 Also 'n' hops could be configurable - ie don't see any reviews in your circle of friends+2 hops? Then try circle+3. Reporting "spam" comments/reviews is also more benefical as your are essentially performing housekeeping on your own "opinion mass" (and cleaning up it up for others as well).

 This "opinion mass" could also be harnessed by producers - if I visit BA or Virgin and they are aware of the "opinion mass" then they should alter there prices accordingly. If my "opinion mass" is decidely anti BA then this is an opportunity for them to put a smile on our face. And if I visit Virgin they might see this as an opportunity to compound this negative BA opinion.

 Obviously the bigger the opinion mass the more away it holds.

 Long live the revolution!

 Ideally the server would get complex enough to pass the Alun Turing test where the human participant is unsure whether the other participant is human or machine.

 What's the point of this? Well, ghoulishly this could be chatting to the dead. I know, sounds nuts but bear with with! With complex enough software (and a rich enough databases of stories/phrases etc) then interacting with such a service might provide some comfort no? Comfort to the living and maybe comfort to the dead as an "interactive" bit of them is left online.

 But how would the software be able to generate a rich enough picture of you to mimic you? Well, a good start would be social networking - Facebook/Twitter etc these will leave a mamouth trail of data to help reconstruct your chatting traits.

 Perhaps this is why Facebook want to own our data? So that they can sell the "dead chat" service to our loved ones when we've gone!

 In short, I love the photos and tagging. The rest of it? The stupid games, confusing crowded interface and errrr did I mention the stupid games? Nah, that's all junk...but the tagged photos though...that's something.

 My "concern" for facebook though is that it isn't really/supposedly about tagged photos is it?

 The concern being this, going forward we are going to be more and more concerned about where our photos are stored online and who has access to them. We may not want them to be "locked" into a particular "social networking" app we are playing with at any one time. Such an app should "request" access to my photos - not own them (and owning is something Facebook is desparate about as, without content, Facebook is nothing - hence there t&c debacle recently).

 This separation between aps and core personal content will be/is easily achieved given the fact that all good web apps need to have an API - a programmable interface which allows other applications to interact with it. Good web apps NEED a good API to interact with and NEED a good api to be interacted with - a web app is beyond a website.

 I've currently got the bulk of my online personal photos on http://picasaweb.google.com/joelhughes with the less family kinda stuff on http://flickr.com/joelhughes. Now it irks me to have these two images dumps to start with but it irks me more to upload to Facebook photos which are already on picaseweb - my software engineering background naturally recoils from such needless duplication!

 What I would prefer to do is to grant Facebook access to some of my centrally stored photos but grant them not just access to the raw photo but access to the meta data as well. I.e. grant them access to MY "people tags". Yes we are back to an online identity issue here but that's solveable - it has to be solveable as this data won't be internal in the next Facebook - it's out there somewhere - if you think that Facebook is the end game of social newtworking then you are plane wrong. Yes they have a gazillion users but online users are fickle.