Comments on: Social Network Clutter

By: Olivier D. alias ze kat

Olivier D. alias ze kat — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:28:00 +0000

I share your mind. And I submit you to adopt lifestream service.

See my sign ; I build new way profile system built with TWO lifestream. One “main” stream of our content (blog, photo, video, bookmark) and another stream of our activities (micro-blogs as Twitter, Cluztr, LastFM, Wakoopa, Digg, etc)

By: Phil Hofmeyr

Phil Hofmeyr — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Fred – really enjoyed your post! I think there are 3 issues here:
– As you point out, Facebook must start to adjust the feed to your ‘thumbs-up/down’ preferences or lose credibility.
– As socnet competition and dataportability increases, the market (i.e. users) will decide what level of spam/ad inclusion they are prepared to tolerate.
– The quality of a feed is personal. Thus its value is a function of the value of your friends. Choose a small group and the results will resonate with you much more often. Choose a large group and you have to trawl more but the chances of discovering something new are massively enhanced. A personal trade-off.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:12:00 +0000

@anon

Ok, I see. Is one worse than the other? I suppose you’d have to evaluate this based on product impact. Facebook is a singular brand, and I experience ads IN Facebook, IN my newsfeed. Feedburner ads are entirely different; I’m experiencing “relevant” ads in YOUR feed, and Feedburner is transparent. In both case they are annoying, in both cases we can make the “evil company” argument, but only in Facebook is the ad affecting perceptions of the product. This is a major difference in my opinion.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:47:00 +0000

Hi Fred

Sorry about being vague. I was comparing the ad in the FB newfeed to the feedburner RSS ads that I get in Google reader: is one worse than the other?

By: fred

fred — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:42:00 +0000

Do you mean the dentistry ad? That’s my doing – it came from Facebook. If there are other ads can you send me a screenshot?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:12:00 +0000

Hi Fred.

What do you think of Feedburner ads in your RSS feed?

By: Sam Jackson

Sam Jackson — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:04:00 +0000

I too go through elaborate hoops with greasemonkey to make sure that there are no spammy ads in my newsfeed, but with facebook’s constant ad-tweaking I have to regularly manually edit those scripts to take account for their new forms… it’s very obnoxious. I have some thoughts, as an insider among the college crowd, on Facebook’s somewhat-decline and shifting use-patterns because of this and other changes… it’s a pretty serious issue!

By: Vaclav Synacek

Vaclav Synacek — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:28:00 +0000

I have to agree. The spam even made me install Greasemonkey only for Facebook custom app hider script to get rid of anything the apps throw in the feed.

By: Justin Baum

Justin Baum — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:46:00 +0000

Man, I couldn’t agree more. I can’t use the damn thing because of this. After reading your post I tallied up how many items in the news feed I actually wanted to see, it was 8 out 15. I have about 200 friends to put it in context. Out of those 8 posts none of them have much value to me. Basically happens every time I sign into the book.

If I could filter out the noise down to the things I was interested in.. facebook would basically become a “lifestreaming” or “profile consolidator.” Feeding out activity from other apps.

I think you summed all of this up best in your “Google OpenSocial and Situational Relevance” post. Facebook is grasping at air. Give it a year or two and my money says there will be no reason to haunt that house anymore.

By: ben

ben — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:31:00 +0000

Amen. I barely ever log on anymore – only when someone sends me a message (and it’s not from some org that I barely remember giving permission to). I suppose these are the travails of trying to squeeze a business model out of something that is better without one.