This reflections started when a local group I subscribed on Facebook changed its name. A while ago, the administrator started a group about my region and its residents. When I subscribed I thought: “It is a pretty common practice, somebody feels the need to create a group about a shared interest”. I thought it was a good idea and so did many. I still think it is a good idea but not when the following happens. The administrator of the group is also an organizer of local parties. Recently he changed the name of the group, from the generic name of the region to the name of a party! You might think: “He is dishonest, a profiteer!”. I think so, but my reflections got immediately over, to the platform on the backstage.
Why did Facebook designers allowed the possibility to rename a group? By designers here I mean Interaction Designer, people who thought and reflected on the dynamics implemented in the platform (e.g. you can see the pictures of your friends, friends can post on your wall, etc.) This features, consciously or not, are the reflections of design choices, and any designer who as worked on social products had been in front of junctions like: should we allow this or not? why?
I am wondering, why on earth Facebook designers allowed group renaming? Have you ever been in a real world group? I did. Have you ever participated to a group that changed its name? I did. Before renaming, the new name (and goals of the group) have been discussed by the WHOLE group. Here I am not trying to defend the party organizer, he did his part, but I am ascribing some responsibility to the designers. If a platform enables such a behavior it is not well designed, and in front of such episodes people might loose trust in the platform itself. The possibility of renaming a group enables everybody with some charisma to collect “friends” and cheat on them. My boss is happy because I joined the charity group, and the day after I am fired because the group name changed to “Satan apostles”.
I am not blaming the WHOLE Facebook, for it allowed me to get some job and to get in touch with old friends I’d have never met otherwise, but I am just reflecting on a single (apparently) little feature which enables a sort of anti-social behavior.
Let me close with a thought from a development view point: how many meanings depend on the change of a string? :)

There are many suggestions on who to follow on Twitter, enable also by tools like Twubble and Twitdir.
As far as I know there are much less posts about un-following. Here is my take.


Continues on Louis Gray’s blog.


Thanks Louis for the opportunity!

A new release of Posty is out today. On time to be put under the Christmas tree.
Here is the change log.
Enjoy!

• nine new graphical themes to customize the look and feel
• new Panel layout to quicken the choice between tabs
• a new tab, Friends, to read in one shot the updates from your Twitter and Identica
• improved notification of new tweets. (drag the window to position it as you prefer)
• possibility to choose the font from the list of installed fonts
• possibility to delete sensible data (usernames and passwords)
• better memory management. less memory consumption

To download it go to the Posty home page.

I like StumbleUpon. My website gets many visits from there. But as many ( blahblahtech and traffikd ) I have an issue with the friends limit.
Said briefly you can be fan of at most 200 people. After that you get a warning and you cannot add more fans. You cannot even reciprocate a fan of yours. So you are in a kind of deadlock.
I devise this sort of algorithm to deal with such a situation:

• Become fan of a friend
• if he reciprocates fine
• if he doesn’t, persuade him to unfriend inactive people he is fan of
• if he doesn’t reply for a while unfriend him, because he is not active or does not share any interest with you

In Actionscript :)

var limit:int = 2; // weeks

for each (stumbler:People in peopleYouAreFanOf) {
	if (!stumbler.reciprocates() ||
            !stumbler.persuaded() ||
            stumbler.getRepliesWithin(limit) == 0)
        {
		stumbler.unfriend();
	}
	else {
		you.sayThanks(stumbler);
		you.interactWith(stumbler);
	}
}