The funny thing about introducing friend grouping now is that it is hard to retroactively group your friends. You might have been able to categorize people when you first became friends, but there is something potentially insulting about going through your list of 5, 20, 2000 friends after-the-fact and categorizing them into degrees of friendship.
(But maybe this is where you see the sales person putting all their clients into a group called ‘clients’. You then see a categorical difference between ones clients and ones ‘help you move your couch’ friends.)
The real question: does grouping friends give us new data sets for analyzing the relationships between people on facebook?
I don’t think it’s insulting to rearrange your friends after the fact, especially if your friends can’t see how they are categorized. That’s one thing I like about Facebook - often you can’t see how others are perceiving you and categorizing you.
I think the friend grouping would be a very powerful tool for anthropologists and ethnographers studying friendships and communities. I don’t think it’s something you can see on any open profile, but if you ran interviews with a group of people, it could offer some interesting insight into the process of friending and relationship management.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Clearly a testimony to the influence of DesignWalk!
December 19th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
For that crack, you’re out of my inner circle… ;)
Kidding!
Woohoo! Go Davey, go Davey…
December 20th, 2007 at 11:00 am
The funny thing about introducing friend grouping now is that it is hard to retroactively group your friends. You might have been able to categorize people when you first became friends, but there is something potentially insulting about going through your list of 5, 20, 2000 friends after-the-fact and categorizing them into degrees of friendship.
(But maybe this is where you see the sales person putting all their clients into a group called ‘clients’. You then see a categorical difference between ones clients and ones ‘help you move your couch’ friends.)
The real question: does grouping friends give us new data sets for analyzing the relationships between people on facebook?
December 20th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I don’t think it’s insulting to rearrange your friends after the fact, especially if your friends can’t see how they are categorized. That’s one thing I like about Facebook - often you can’t see how others are perceiving you and categorizing you.
I think the friend grouping would be a very powerful tool for anthropologists and ethnographers studying friendships and communities. I don’t think it’s something you can see on any open profile, but if you ran interviews with a group of people, it could offer some interesting insight into the process of friending and relationship management.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Ah hah … I am so paranoid of having my re-arrangements of friends being seen that I didn’t even try!