Social Networking – Steve Novoselac's Blog

A couple of days ago, one of my developers got me on Google+ (or do you write it Google Plus?) Anyways, it is pretty cool. New social network, yay. Kind of like Facebook, but not. More granularity on sharing to “groups” or circles out of the gate. Integrates nicely with some Google offerings.

Do I see it taking off? Well, if history repeats itself, I could say .. it depends.

First off, Google has bombed on social in recent years. Buzz? Wave? yeah, not too good. But they are adding all the pieces that other social networks have and now trying to integrate them (location, micro blogging, sharing, photos, etc, etc).

Second, Myspace is dead. Friendster is long gone. No one though Myspace would topple, but Facebook dethroned them. Can Google do the same thing to Facebook?

Hard to say, but at the current moment they have the best chance.

So last night I decided it was time. Time to put and end to the madness, the quizzes, the nonsense, the “friends on my list that aren’t really my friends” game. What I decided to do was just… delete them all. Everyone. Then see how my “friend” list grows from there.

I think one thing as well, when I started Facebook, they didn’t have many of the features they do now. Friend lists were nonexistent, but they did have these “how do I know this person” feature, which now is subtly hidden or not even there at all. What ensued was close to 500 people with no way to manage them. What if I want a picture album that only XYZ people can see? I need to create a list, but creating a list when you have no one in lists is a pain. Now I can create lists and when I add new friends I can add them to the lists then.

Also, the news feed. Filled with junk, or updates from people I don’t care about. Was getting sick of hiding people or updates, or quizzes, or whatever. I got to thinking, why do I have all these people on my friend list if I don’t care what they are updating? So I started to pair it down, remove people I don’t know, then people I haven’t talked to in real life, then people I haven’t talked to in years and when they got on FB they added me and I haven’t said anything to, then I said, well I will remove people I wouldn’t go have a beer with, then it just became a mess and I said whatever, I will remove everyone and start this experiment. Remove myself from all Groups and stop being a Fan of Sunshine, Campfires, and Not Having Swine Flu.

After removing a few people I wrote on my wall that I was removing everyone, and before I was even done getting through the purge process (you have to delete one by one by the way. Facebook makes it easy to add friends, pain to remove more than one at a time) someone had added me back. Cool. Then I twittered it, and a couple of friends added me back. Nice. So that’s where I am at, and if I stay there, then cool, if I add friend back, well then at least I will have them categorized as I go.

It’s funny now with few friends, how bad Facebook is at telling me who I should be friends with. It wants me to be friends with everyone from SCSU because I graduated there in 2002. Not good. Wondering though if it doesn’t recommend people I have removed? Hard to say.

Sometimes spring cleaning is fun, starting at zero, new.