SMUG Social Media University Global

Facebook Friend Grouping – Finally!

I’ve said previously that grouping of friends within Facebook was an inevitable new feature because of the very logic of the service, and that this would substantially aid Facebook’s effort to edge out LinkedIn as the place for both professional and personal networking. If Facebook wants to accurately represent the “social graph” it needs to enable users to account for the fact that some friends are closer than others.

Facebook users got some great news just before Christmas (and in my family time off, with three straight days of Christmas visitors I haven’t been blogging, so I’m just getting around to writing about it.) Facebook has implemented the first phase of friend grouping, and it’s really well done.

Applications like “Top Friends” and “Circle of Friends” are fine, but the problem is they are out there for everyone to see. So if you add someone to a group using one of those applications, everyone who has access to your profile can see who is in what groups.

The best thing about the new baked-in friend grouping in Facebook is that it’s private. I’ve created five new friend groups, for example, but they’re only visible to me. So I can organize my Facebook friends in a way that makes sense to me, which enables me to have various spheres that reflect the reality of how close we are.

The other neat new part of the Facebook friend grouping is the ability to send a group message to everyone in the group. Here’s a message I sent earlier today to my Family friends.

I found through sending this message that when you send a message to a group, every recipient sees the name of every other recipient. They don’t necessarily find out the name of the group list you’ve created, but they can “reply all” to all of the other members.

So, in essence, this is a great way to create a messaging distribution list, to take advantage of the spam-fighting features of Facebook. It makes it more realistic to rely on Facebook as a messaging alternative to email.

The even better news about this development of variable friend grouping in Facebook is that now we know there will be further enhancements related to these groups. As Mark Slee concluded his post in the Facebook blog:

This is just a start. Expect to see lots of new Friend Lists features in 2008 that will give you more control over the information you share on Facebook and who you share it with.

When this becomes reality, and when we can truly segregate the personal from the professional within Facebook so that professional friends won’t have complete access to our personal lives, then we will see Facebook achieve its goal of being the one-stop social utility. Then, as Nick says, sites like LinkedIn will find the competition much more difficult.

Proud Papa Post

Time for a point of personal privilege for a proud Daddy: Sunday was a big day for Lisa and me, as our oldest daughter, Rachel, graduated from college at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

This will be part of the Christmas letter/blog post I write in the next week (a great way to beat the postal service mail delivery holiday crush and to include multimedia that isn’t possible with a paper card), but this is a big accomplishment that deserves a post of its own.

Rachel was introduced to her now-husband Kyle about two years ago through Facebook (which was my introduction to the service and its potential). They were married last Dec. 30, and he graduates in May. Later this year they’ll be headed to California, where Kyle will start seminary.

And of course, Rachel’s a blogger, too. Here’s the blog she writes (with occasional posts from Kyle), and here’s his.

Rachel’s official last day of college was yesterday, when she completed her finals.

Congratulations, Sweetheart!

In Case You Slept Through 2007

Jeff Jarvis has a year-end wrap-up column in The Guardian that does a great job of summarizing the key developments in the media world. He calls 2007 “the year of Facebook.” I certainly agree with that, as regular readers of this blog would attest. I highly recommend this column for anyone looking for a succinct analysis of trends affecting both mainstream and social media. And check out his blog for more regular dispatches on the topic.

Jeff says it’s been Facebook’s year, but the century belongs to Google…so far. It’s good that he added that qualifier, because the century is still young. Facebook didn’t exist four years ago. Google is less than a decade old. We can’t imagine the changes we’ll see in the next 92 years.

Technorati: Jeff Jarvis, Facebook, social media, Google

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, a Bass and Basketball

Earlier this week as I was traveling to the Association Forum Holiday Showcase I wrote that locating national headquarters in Chicago makes sense because travel is more convenient than it is for many cities. I still think that’s true, but my experience over the next 24 hours made me glad that at least I didn’t have to spend the night with John Candy as a bunkmate.

Our plane departure from Rochester to Chicago was delayed until about 7:35 p.m., and then we had an excellent flight, 45 minutes at most. But when we got there we were in for a rude surprise: the pilot announced that all the gates were full, and we weren’t going to be able to disembark for about 35 minutes. About 45 minutes later, he came back on the intercom and said we still didn’t know when there would be an open gate. This was no Jet Blue situation; at least we knew that we didn’t have a flight ahead of us after the delay on the ground. But it did take about twice as long to get from the tarmac to the gate as it took to fly 300 miles from Rochester to Chicago.

I immediately headed for the train from the airport to the downtown Hyatt Regency. This was uneventful, but still took about an hour. I checked in to the hotel at about 11:15.

When I woke up at 6:15 to prepare for my presentation, I turned on the news and saw that an ice storm was headed our way. Must have had something to do with our gate problem the night before. And by 7:45 I had gotten the news that my flight back to Rochester had been canceled, so I was going to have to stay over another night.

Or would I? That’s where the automobiles part of this journey came in, as I rented a car right after my presentation for what turned out to be the seven-hour drive home. It was rainy in Chicago, but at the Wisconsin border it turned to slush, which meant that I was maxing at 45 mph for about an hour. But then I drove out of it, and made it back to Austin by about 6:15.

These were expensive tickets, as the Hertz pricing for a one-way rental was about six times the rate for a local rental. But I got to see my son Joe’s orchestra concert at 7, and my daughter Rebekah’s basketball game at 7:30. Well worth it. Here’s the combined 1:11 highlight reel:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLBXfaqDYt0]

And here’s the post I wrote highlighting some key steps association executives should take in exploring Facebook. All-in-all, it was a memorable day. I enjoyed the great give-and-take of discussion about Facebook and social networking, and still made it home to watch the Packer girls execute the give-and-go.

Technorati: Chicago, Association Forum, Basketball, Orchestra, Cello, travel, nightmares, airlines, planes, trains, automobiles, Hertz, Hyatt, Facebook