That's not quite what I want -- I don't mind tech things being visible to family, but I suspect they're following me for the baby photos. So I don't want circles, or friend lists, that block people from seeing things, so much as a functional tagging system that lets the viewer decide which of my circles/lists they want to be in.
And I want it simple and easy to understand and use, even for non-techies, such that it "just works". And a pony.
No, but I agree that it would be a nice feature. Not so much as a tagging system, but this strikes me as something good they could finally do with all their ML/AI stuff.
I have friends who will post photos, and I'll love for FB to detect that they often post single photos, and allow me to subscribe to just those. Even if it means relying on FB's algorithms deciding what posts make the cut.
The same goes for friends who will occasionally post blog-style stuff. While I'd prefer it if they actually blogged, being able to go to their profile and getting a FB-suggested 'type' of post to subscribe to would be peachy.
Other algorithmic suggestions I can imagine:
- the friend who consistently posts great links to longer-form journalistic articles
- the friend who posts mostly 'funny comics/pics', but actually funny ones
- the friend who seems to know half the town and diligently clicks 'interested/going' for events that I am also interested in.
- and the above possibly with an option to drill down and get more specific suggestions (I'm sure FB could segment the events at least by a crude party/political dimension.
- the family member who posts all sorts of weird crap, but also the interesting family-related updates. It can't be that difficult to detect which of their posts are the family updates (and perhaps there could be a 'suggest category/tag/whatever' feature so that my dad can diligently mark these updates (which I know he would!).
With the above, or even a crude version of it, I could see myself browsing FB quite a bit, and I wouldn't mind the occasional sponsored post (which could be targeted specifically to the feed/mood I'm in).
I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing about all this, but I feel moderately confident that FB is not doing this, not because of particularly good reasons, but because they're stuck in a particular 'mode' and a bit too conservative about it (shortsighted advertising). I can't tell if this is just because they're a big corporation at this point, or because of 'SV incentives', or going public, or whatever else.
