Informal Brain

An interesting points from a new Facebook study:

In other words, Facebook users comment on stuff from only about 5-7% of their Facebook friends. And as has been shown by many other studies, women communicate with more people in all cases than men.

via Facebook’s “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users’ Social Behavior .

The study also noted that people with more friends do not respond to more posts or chat to more friends.

I would propose that the true is not with end user bandwidth but their ability to consume the amount of data flowing through the newsfeed.  I have noticed for example at 100 friends the noise level and attention swapping in the news feed becomes almost unbearable.  The problem becomes even worse when the friend set is made of highly diverse clusters of people.  For example if your friend set is 1) your family, 2) your high school contacts, 3) your co-workers, 4) your close friends, 5) previous co-workers.  The issue is is there is little overlap between these sets of friends and this makes for a very cluttered news feed.

Optimally, your set of friends would be small, highly related and very active.  Best case with the example above people from two of the groups both comment on a status update but typically they are both interacting with you, not each other.

A couple of options:

1. Make the separate news feeds by friend list more prominent.  It is currently hidden in the drop down and I admit I don’t get their very often.
2. Direct the attention of the news feed based on clustering rather then just attention to particular people in the friend groups above.  Perhaps Facebook is trying to make this happen but I don’t see it.

Final thought.  Think about why so many users on twitter gravitate to the client Tweetdeck.  I suspect many people have created groups to break apart their twitter friends using different tweekdeck panes.  It is the only logical way to follow and interact with a diverse group of friends.  Similar problem with a solution like number 1 above.

Start counting down the days and refreshing your App Store icons starting tomorrow. The long awaited refresh of the Facebook iPhone app is upon us.

Thanks everyone for being patient waiting for me to finish Facebook for iPhone 2.0. The good news is, I plan to submit the update to the iPhone App Store a week from today. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will be able to download it a week from today – Apple reviews every application before making it available, and they can sometimes take up to a week. So, you may get the update as soon as next Wednesday, or as late as October 1st.

[From Facebook | Facebook for iPhone's Notes]

The new photo tagging looks absolutely wild. It looks like it leverages touch services so you can tap the photo after you have taken it on the device and tag it with your contacts on the phone using touch gestures. Brilliant!

So how long until I just point all my links to my friendfeed page rather then my blog?

Is this what friendfeed is counting on? Should I just post my content there? Forget, blogging?

Interested parties want to know…

A new competitor to twitter has arrived. Plurk.com offers a few new features and a unique timeline view for your “plurks?!” The big questions are: Will loyal twitter fans jump ship to plurk during twitter’s moment of service failure. Can plurk keep their service snappy and highly available under an onslaught of twitter immigrants.

Upsides: timeline view, commenting, threading, AJAX, mobile client is very nice.

Downsides: hard to find friends, follow vs friend is confusing, no plurk search (only email and IM), lack of SMS

If you want to add me as a friend on plurk.com click here.

If you are like most business users today you start your day here:

Then you typically head into your inbox and dig through a pile of email from the previous night filtering out the ones which are really important to your projects and tasks at the top of your queue.

IBM is experimenting with new social networking software for enterprises called Connections. Connections makes the assumption that the starting point each day is an activity feed from your trusted contacts and projects letting you know exactly what has been updated or changed. Think friend feed or Facebook newsfeed for the enterprise.

I recently saw a demo of the entire IBM collaboration stack and was impressed that they really do get it. Unfortunately the person demoing the solution started with the inbox, worked their way into instant messaging / communication and then finished with collaboration and connections. I was impressed when one of the younger members of the management team asked quite seriously: “When does the order of the demo change?” The IBM rep though for a minute and then said: “You’re right! Once we see the current Facebook generation enter the enterprise the order will change.” Ah I thought, IBM gets it!

The workforce is changing. Social networking will be the killer application for the enterprise and IBM has already made a significant investment to build out a workflow that starts with a social network, escalates to instant communication and falls back to email if necessary. That folks, is, the game changer.

There has been significant noise lately about Microsoft looking to buy Facebook. In my mind a smart Microsoft executive would see Facebook as the technology to round out their enterprise offering. Unfortunately it is not compatible with the Microsoft software stack and that is a problem. Microsoft is still sticking to their position that desktop productivity applications are the driver for knowledge workers. Anymore, the next generation will shun Outlook and will be far more comfortable interacting in IM clients and web based networking tools. Microsoft has not made significant investment in this space, and Sharepoint (MOSS) feels more like a 90s portal product and less like a game changing social networking tool. Even their experiment with Knowledge Network for MOSS has gone dormant since last summer and not re-emerged.

Today’s enterprises need more then collaboration, they need social experiences. People need to feel more connected to their peers then through document sharing. They want tools like twitter, and Facebook for the enterprise. With Connections, IBM is close.

IBM fell behind significantly with Notes. They lost focus on the user experience, but in some ways that might have helped them. It allowed them to re-focus on what is important to the upcoming workforce and not get stuck in the previous email client driven rut, and that folks changes where you start your day…

I have noticed a disturbing trend at work lately. We all have the same 5-10 short sleeve shirts in our closet! This week I had the embarrassing experience of showing up for a lunch appointment with a co-worker and we were wearing exactly the same shirt.

We thought this might make for the perfect Facebook application. One where you can enter in the shirt selection of the day and it will tell you if any of your friends have chosen the same one as you.

Build away if you think it is a good idea. I for one could be your first customer!