![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Facebok actually improves privacy this time around
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 09:14 amToday, FB announced three big features
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/live_blog_facebooks_mysterious_announcement.php
1. Data portability: You'll be able to download your data. This is a great step.
2. A page to manage privacy settings on apps: Good because it simplifies the control process.
3. Groups: Simpler way to share information.
Of the three, Groups is the most exciting feature, because of the range of things you can do in them, and also the privacy settings: you'll be able to make the content within the groups private, and even make the listing of members private. In LJ terms, groups are sort of like the ability to create a friends-list filter, and then share it with others as a 'social space,' but they're more like comms in that the members can also post things. Plus, there are other features like shared document collaboration and group chat. (FB says that only 5% of users used the list feature. I wonder what percentage of LJ users create/regularly use filters?)
I'm more interested in how they're going to avoid abuse. I take it there is a Groups administrator who can exercise moderator control over content, and you can't freely join groups, you must be invited (and it'll tell the entire group who invited you, but this sounds like there's drama potential there).
The feature is intended to reflect RL groups of friends, and more as a 'filter out the stuff that not all of your friends are interested in,' but since you can be part of a group, and share privately with the group members, who are not necessarily your FB friends, I suspect people will find ways to make this reflect internet social groups as well, although really large groups will have trouble with the way it kind of breaks down around 200 members. (It's also not for companies either; they recommend businesses continue to use FB Pages)
Hopefully, these moves will inspire other social media companies to become more data-portable, and create more flexible group features.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/live_blog_facebooks_mysterious_announcement.php
1. Data portability: You'll be able to download your data. This is a great step.
2. A page to manage privacy settings on apps: Good because it simplifies the control process.
3. Groups: Simpler way to share information.
Of the three, Groups is the most exciting feature, because of the range of things you can do in them, and also the privacy settings: you'll be able to make the content within the groups private, and even make the listing of members private. In LJ terms, groups are sort of like the ability to create a friends-list filter, and then share it with others as a 'social space,' but they're more like comms in that the members can also post things. Plus, there are other features like shared document collaboration and group chat. (FB says that only 5% of users used the list feature. I wonder what percentage of LJ users create/regularly use filters?)
I'm more interested in how they're going to avoid abuse. I take it there is a Groups administrator who can exercise moderator control over content, and you can't freely join groups, you must be invited (and it'll tell the entire group who invited you, but this sounds like there's drama potential there).
The feature is intended to reflect RL groups of friends, and more as a 'filter out the stuff that not all of your friends are interested in,' but since you can be part of a group, and share privately with the group members, who are not necessarily your FB friends, I suspect people will find ways to make this reflect internet social groups as well, although really large groups will have trouble with the way it kind of breaks down around 200 members. (It's also not for companies either; they recommend businesses continue to use FB Pages)
Hopefully, these moves will inspire other social media companies to become more data-portable, and create more flexible group features.
