The Unit Structures blog comments on the expected introduction of social zones / buddy lists in Facebook, based on the introduction of new 'Friend List' methods in its API:
"In doing this, FB would compete directly into Ning's territory, as well as giving tens of millions of other people a new reason to join. Seeing as FB is so devoted to the 35+ demographic, you can just imagine parents saying "I can join Facebook but only be part of my Family's network? Sounds great!" And to this extent, as FB's mission is to connect people to other people they know, this would clearly be within scope."
This would go a long way towards answering Meg Pickard's very well-argued call for segmented groups to cover the various dimensions of our real-world relationships.
It would be a very good time for Facebook to introduce this new feature, as I am starting to sense a slight ennui among some of my own Facebook 'friends' who are starting to max out their usage of the tool as it exists today. Segmenting our activity into different groups would allow people to throw more of themselves into the tool without needing to worry how it plays out with everybody from their parents and employers to ex-boyfriends and co-conspirators.
This has an added dimension for people who currently blur the line between work and play. We have been talking to a number of large companies recently about their peoples' existing usage of Facebook and 'what they should (not) do about it' (my learned colleague Lars was even wheeled out as an expert on this topic for BBC Breakfast the other day). The segementation of Facebook friends would be a very handy way of letting people begin to set some boundaries for their employer's involvement in their own Facebook activity. Given that some of our clients have around 1,000 people on Facebook (some banks have many more), and in some cases it is being used as a personal business tool to route around unhelpful intranets and internal tools, this is an interesting and multi-dimensional issue.
A key question for me will be how this affects status updates, which like many people I use as a semi-coded mini-twitter, and which is in fact the most likely source of cross-network faux pas. Will we still have a single status, or will these be segmented by group as well?
This use of FB is an interesting development I have been watching for a few months and the idea of closed areas within FB is intriguing. My concern is that I have come across instances where staff are using FB not because the intranet is poor but just becomes it "feels" more social or personal to them.....FB is regarded as a non work tool.
I do wonder what problems this trend is creating for the future. There are so many social software sites proliferating at the moment and if FB ceases to be flavour of the year and is replaced by another site of the moment, we could see masses of corporate communication and data housed on many social software sites - all outside the firewall.
You raise a good point on the after-effects of segmentation, including status updates that are specific to segments.
Most users probably don't have a network large enough to require segmenting, so perhaps facebook wouldn't roll it out as standard, since a simple status update could then lose its charm. I think they might instead add sorting on the friends list. At the moment, adding a friend involves checking boxes like "we met randomly", etc. Since they're parameters, it's possible to sort a list by parameter, such as "we worked together". That could be basic segmentation. A more elaborate play would be to have named groups.
I'm building a facebook app at the moment with another developer - the API is unpredictable!
Amit