Well Google beat me to the punch here. I had been meaning to put up a rant about social networks, and how the lack of fine-grained “grouping” was keeping them from getting to the next level.
What I mean by that is Twitter and Facebook (and all the other lesser players in social media) only allow for the concept of a friend. Everybody in the whole world you have any type of relationship with, is a friend. And all of your social interactions go to all of your friends. This is one level below everything you do is public, and belongs on television.
Social networks have to model, mirror even, our real world social interactions, in order to augment them (and provide value we will pay for). That means Facebook needs to grasp the difference between my boss and my wife and my bowling buddy, and allow me to naturally control what I share with each one of them, not just lump them all into a group. This is not just about damage control (the classic drunk at the bar photo). It’s about value. I’ve got a cute story about my kids that my mother and my sister will find amusing, but it’s just clogging up the feeds of the rest of my “friends”.
Well, to get to the point, Google has had the same thought, and built friend-grouping into their newest Facebook-killer/social network, Google+, and is calling it “Circles”.
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