31 Comments »At lunch today I had a revelation. If Facebook expanded their privacy settings just a little bit, they could end LinkedIn’s success. Imagine if you were able to control all of your identities from one location. There would be three generic profile settings (or privacy categories): friends, professional and family. For each of those you can control which items users in that category could see.
Additionally, you could select what individuals could see, in the case that the general privacy settings did not fit them accurately. Once that occurred, Facebook would be capable of completely replacing all functionality that LinkedIn provides. What would take this one step further is the ability to control what applications each privacy category could access. I previously discussed this feature set and have thoroughly considered developing it within an application. Rather than investing the time and energy, I think Facebook should release this as an extended feature. Do you think this would be a useful feature?
I have been thinking of this for some time! Vote @ http://facebook.shoulddothis.com
This is the ONE killer feature that will be a success for FB.. of course there will be some people out there that will have no idea.. or find it a little complicated
The way I see it: classes of 'friends'
Class 1 - Best friends - can see class 1/2/3/4/5
Class 2 - Friends (todays friends) - Can see class 2/3/4/5
Class 3 - Acquantances (yesterdays friends) - Can see class 3/4/5
Class 4 - Colleagues - Can see class 4/5
Class 5 - Randoms (poke buddys etc) and also your public profile - Can see class 5
It removes the stupid limited profile. (what does that mean really?) and your 'friends' don't need to know what class they are in anyway!
Like you said, would replace LinkedIn, and also means you can have a public profile that actually means something!
All you allfacebook readers out there.. send this in as an improvement to Facebook
Damn facebook. They have way too much potential. That idea is really good because it opens the doors for those people that are willing to have just one social network and organize their collegues, acquantances, etc..
crazy idea.
I have been thinking of this for some time! Vote @ http://facebook.shoulddothis.com
This is the ONE killer feature that will be a success for FB.. of course there will be some people out there that will have no idea.. or find it a little complicated
The way I see it: classes of ‘friends’
Class 1 - Best friends - can see class 1/2/3/4/5
Class 2 - Friends (todays friends) - Can see class 2/3/4/5
Class 3 - Acquantances (yesterdays friends) - Can see class 3/4/5
Class 4 - Colleagues - Can see class 4/5
Class 5 - Randoms (poke buddys etc) and also your public profile - Can see class 5
It removes the stupid limited profile. (what does that mean really?) and your ‘friends’ don’t need to know what class they are in anyway!
Like you said, would replace LinkedIn, and also means you can have a public profile that actually means something!
All you allfacebook readers out there.. send this in as an improvement to Facebook
“If Facebook expanded their privacy settings just a little bit, they could end Facebook’s success.”
Perhaps some editing is needed.
Good point though, interesting to ponder.
Damn facebook. They have way too much potential. That idea is really good because it opens the doors for those people that are willing to have just one social network and organize their collegues, acquantances, etc..
crazy idea.
I agree, but I'd take it a step further and allow you to tag your friends however you like, then assign your security based on each tag you create. You may have family, work, good friends, neighbors, church, poker buddies etc. See http://bennewton.us/2007/07/16/tag-your-friend-...
“If Facebook expanded their privacy settings just a little bit, they could end Facebook’s success.”
Perhaps some editing is needed.
Good point though, interesting to ponder.
I think this is a *critical* feature.
I agree, but I’d take it a step further and allow you to tag your friends however you like, then assign your security based on each tag you create. You may have family, work, good friends, neighbors, church, poker buddies etc. See http://bennewton.us/2007/07/16/tag-your-friend-the-answer-to-defining-friends-on-facebook/
[...] Tag Your Friend, The Answer to Defining Friends on Facebook UPDATE (8/24/2007) : I see this post is getting a lot more attention lately. Especailly from people searching how to tag friends on facebook. Clearly this is a feature people want. See: http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/08/facebooks-killer-feature/ [...]
Absolutely, we need this. More and more of my co-workers are joining. I don't want to have to sensor what I share with my best friends because the guy in my office has no business seeing it.
I think this is a *critical* feature.
Absolutely, we need this. More and more of my co-workers are joining. I don’t want to have to sensor what I share with my best friends because the guy in my office has no business seeing it.
I think this is a critical feature, too. It seems that a lot of people can be very picky with who gets to see what and I can understand that. Not too many developers seem to see this, though. But I can imagine that it can get very complicated and even too fine-grained to process efficently. Maybe caching will be enough.
I think this is a critical feature, too. It seems that a lot of people can be very picky with who gets to see what and I can understand that. Not too many developers seem to see this, though. But I can imagine that it can get very complicated and even too fine-grained to process efficently. Maybe caching will be enough.
[...] Friday, Nick over over AllFacebook.com posted about the one killer Facebook feature that would make LinkedIn irrelevant. I think he’s only half right… extending the [...]
Hi Nick - Absolutely. This definitely needs to happen, especially since Facebook aims to reflect “the social graph.” The reality of our social relationships is we have real friends, family, acquaintances and professional colleagues. We have different information we want to share with each category.
I've written several posts about how to work around the one-class friend system, and the limited profile helps to some degree. But they all introduce friction into a system that otherwise is simple and smooth. I think I have a successful way to do it, but eventually Facebook is going to come up with the simple friend class management.
I would settle for two classes: personal and professional.
I saw they now have a book exchange application, which is nice. But I agree that multiple classes of friends would be the LInkedIn killer. It probably will take a lot of work to do this, but it definitely should be the priority as Facebook aims at the more adult user base.
Hi Nick - Absolutely. This definitely needs to happen, especially since Facebook aims to reflect “the social graph.” The reality of our social relationships is we have real friends, family, acquaintances and professional colleagues. We have different information we want to share with each category.
I’ve written several posts about how to work around the one-class friend system, and the limited profile helps to some degree. But they all introduce friction into a system that otherwise is simple and smooth. I think I have a successful way to do it, but eventually Facebook is going to come up with the simple friend class management.
I would settle for two classes: personal and professional.
I saw they now have a book exchange application, which is nice. But I agree that multiple classes of friends would be the LInkedIn killer. It probably will take a lot of work to do this, but it definitely should be the priority as Facebook aims at the more adult user base.
I agree with you. I've been thinking about this over the last week. Many of my colleagues have been requesting me as a friend. I really wish I could put them in a different category.
I agree with you. I’ve been thinking about this over the last week. Many of my colleagues have been requesting me as a friend. I really wish I could put them in a different category.
I've thought about this for a while and I think the simplest way Facebook could go about it is replace/add to the Limited Profile with a Professional Profile. Every year, millions of Facebook users remove the most interesting and personable information from their profile as they enter the workplace. Facebook needs an entire second profile for work contacts that can be a glorified resume. The Limited Profile worked at first, but people quickly started to realize they were being snubbed when they didn't see your Wall, your photos, etc.
I’ve thought about this for a while and I think the simplest way Facebook could go about it is replace/add to the Limited Profile with a Professional Profile. Every year, millions of Facebook users remove the most interesting and personable information from their profile as they enter the workplace. Facebook needs an entire second profile for work contacts that can be a glorified resume. The Limited Profile worked at first, but people quickly started to realize they were being snubbed when they didn’t see your Wall, your photos, etc.
Been dreaming of this for ages! Especially a family setting as Aunts and friends mums and stuff are joining. Somethings I wanna share with only friends or only family. Looking to the future separating professional and personal is essential!
Been dreaming of this for ages! Especially a family setting as Aunts and friends mums and stuff are joining. Somethings I wanna share with only friends or only family. Looking to the future separating professional and personal is essential!
[...] than a week ago I discussed the prospect of a killer feature on Facebook that allows you to differentiate between various categories of your friends. Within days, Facebook [...]
[...] news does seem to indicate that Facebook is on its way to developing what Nick O’Neill calls Facebook’s Killer Feature. I’ve written previously about some work-arounds for this problem of personal and [...]
[...] Back in August I suggested that if Facebook allowed you to place your friends in specific groups (e.g. professional, social, family, etc) and assign custom privacy settings, LinkedIn would be doomed. While Facebook is going to have to work toward putting an end to LinkedIn, they have announced their intention to launch this new feature. Facebook states: We’ll let you organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what. [...]
[...] 29th, 2007 · No Comments This makes me so incredibly happy: Back in August I suggested that if Facebook allowed you to place your friends in specific groups (e.g. professional, social, [...]
[...] Back in August I suggested that if Facebook allowed you to place your friends in specific groups (e.g. professional, social, family, etc) and assign custom privacy settings, LinkedIn would be doomed. While Facebook is going to have to work toward putting an end to LinkedIn, they have announced their intention to launch this new feature. Facebook states: We’ll let you organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what. [...]
[...] is something which users have been requesting since a long time. Group will allow users to sort their friends by family, friends or business contacts. Certainly a [...]
[...] Friday, Nick over at AllFacebook.com posted about the one killer Facebook feature that would make LinkedIn irrelevant. I think he’s only half right… extending the [...]