Tag: Facebook groups

  • A Contention

    Ever since Facebook released the new groups, I have been wondering whether, in one sweep, they have started on a path to make the communities (vs) social networks dichotomy redundant. Yes, there is a difference. Of course, they would exist separately, but the dichotomy may cease to be a hugely relevant thing. Yes, I could list out an entire set of things that need to be fixed before they get there, but its still a very good start, when you compare it to its own groups, or groups on other networks like Orkut/LinkedIn.

    There’s a reason I thought so. One of the very interesting services that I don’t use (much) is Quora. Quora is a huge knowledge resource. It does this by allowing users to follow their areas of  interest, ask questions, which are answered by the community. Users can also follow specific questions and even follow people who they think will add value. Imagine the best in the field answering your questions, that’s usually what happens there. Its not just technology. I just saw that Ashton Kutcher had answered a question on Hollywood. And I still can’t make Quora a habit, though I’m trying to. But then I thought, what if this ‘interest’ was a (new) group on Facebook. Facebook is anyway one of my default tabs and an established destination site, and there’d be a much better chance of me participating if interesting QnA and people were a given.

    Back then to networks and communities. I was also looking at it through the prism of Gautam’s content-community social model, and wondering if this potential shift in the nature of networks and communities means that content is becoming a titular king, and distribution the real power. Content would obviously matter since conversations happen around it, and I’m not talking about the 140 character/ FB status message here. But in a social perspective, would good content be able to deliver value for its owner (in this case, I am referring to brands and media outlets) only if it exists in a network like Facebook or is able to deliver as much social functionality in its own network as say, a Facebook does, or has a huge distribution network on say, Twitter?

    Yes, yes, the strategists will say that Facebook, Twitter are just tools, and they’re right, but think about it. My hope is that in the next step of the web’s evolution, we’ll be able to see niche networks in perspective.  🙂

    until next time, contentious?

  • Facebook Groupie

    What kind of a blog would this be if we didn’t discuss Facebook’s new announcements. At a simplistic level, it would seem that Facebook learned a lot from that Google study. (via a conversation with Mahendra)

    Though i can’t access it yet, I’m very happy with the backup option, and hope that its a step towards portability. The new chat availability ‘visualisation’ seems slightly better than the old one. I can’t see the app dashboard yet.  But the other big announcement was the revamping of groups. I’d been categorising friends using lists for a while, but didn’t actually utilise them for anything specific. Though its easy to see this as a wall within a wall, from initial usage, I think the new Groups allow that one layer that needed to be added to generic ‘friendships’ – context, not to mention better control over who sees what. And from what I see, I don’t even have to be friends with a person to share things and have a great conversation on a topic both of us like. There are other advantages too. Of course, there are a a few issues, and as always, Facebook kept everything as public as possible (as default) but changes in this version is as inevitable as the waves of outrage that follows all Facebook announcements.

    I’m still debating whether I’d like the Groups to be integrated better in the newsfeed (with ways to filter as per importance) or whether its current location (sidebar) is a better approach. From a signal-noise perspective, perhaps it should stay the way it is. I’m not very convinced about looking at Groups as ‘Friendfeed going mainstream‘ or even Wave. But that does make me wonder whether the next version will also have a feed aggregator, directly, or indirectly – allowing apps like Networked Blogs. That might actually get RSS to go mainstream. 🙂 If that happens, I am also wondering about the implications on Google Reader, and actually any other network which serves as a content distribution/consumption channel.

    Groups can be made ‘Secret’, and I’m still not sure how ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ groups will show up in Facebook Search. Also, since I still don’t have access to Places, I can only wonder whether ‘Location’ can also be made a group feature. I’m seeing both the above from a brand perspective. Would a brand, for example, be able to highlight a location specific group on their Page, as part of a local promo? Even if the brands do not get information about the groups, Facebook would still have it, and that would definitely help target ads better.

    Groups are not really a silver bullet, but I don’t think Facebook is aiming for that now either. Its just that they’ve not missed the starting gun, to slice and dice my social graph – that’s useful for me, as well as advertisers.

    until next time, group on 😉

  • The Facebook age

    Facebook’s redesign continues to make news on a regular basis. With a whole lot of vociferous users making the 237 Ways To Get Free Publicity ir dislike quite clear, with the help of a layout poll, it was interesting to see that a lot of advice was given to Facebook to not just blindly give in to the crowd –Rex Hammock, Michael Arrington, to name a few. While I’m still not a fan of the new design, I agree with that advice, in fact this is exactly what I’d thought brands in social media should do, so no reason why Facebook shouldn’t apply the logic to itself.

    But Facebook did address the concerns of the users, and made modifications without changing the core thoughts of the new design. Meanwhile it was interesting to note that a fair amount of users found their own Greasemonkey way of getting rid of those annoying quizzes. 🙂 (Check this out for more interesting scripts)

    In spite of this excellent thought provoking post on Facebook’s  strategy and execution, and not discounting Twitter-envy, I reckon that Facebook sees at least a few elements of the new design as the fundamental way forward, the one that can contribute to revenue. Real time features, fan pages redesign all seem to be steps towards dollars. This is perhaps why Facebook has played a balancing act and ‘conceded a battle’, since it wants to pacify users as well as be on track for monetisation. (Facebook is also working on a virtual currency system) I actually wonder if this was just a testing of waters before they attempt some massive changes.

    When I’d written about the Facebook redesign earlier, I’d mentioned that the ‘always on’ usage of Twitter was helped by the horde of applications that can be used from the desktop/browser to connect to Twitter. Well, there have been two developments. Seesmic released a dedicated Facebook application a few weeks back, and Tweetdeck, a popular Twitter app, released a new beta version which also integrates Facebook updates, and has already raised questions on the privacy of the Facebook network. You can check out a few more apps here.

    Another interesting thing to note is Facebook pushing private groups for families. You can share things without it going to your public stream (except Events). This is bound to increase the base – a teen audience as well as the over 50 audience. While Facebook’s largest set of users is in the 18-25 age bracket, the maximum growth these days is coming from the >35 crowd. This age skew would have quite some influence in all the changes that Facebook plans to bring about in the future, and it makes me wonder whether there’ll be a much larger balancing act required between the largest segment of the user base and the monetisable user base. Will they be the same? Will the usage patterns on Facebook change a lot because of the influx of a different audience segment? How will that affect monetisation? What would be the levels of accuracy that advertisers would be able to get in such a diverse system? Will changes in design polarise the users? Will this then result in the rise of new networks? What do you think? Maybe the Masters in Social Media can answer that in some time. 😀

    Meanwhile, with shrinking ad revenues and huge growth adding to costs, Facebook is attempting to raise capital this year. Going by this, Google should be interested. Interestingly Google values FB at $2 billion, and thats a far cry from its self worth of $15 billion.  🙂

    until next time, ‘Like’ ? 😉

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