Aug 26

Are You Still Listening?

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A theme that’s been circulating around these days is something people are calling “Social Fatigue” or being overwhelmed by the amount of information being sent your way through all of your social networks.

Today Jesse Stay wrote a post on louisgray.com, taking a deeper look into the problem by asking the question “Are Your Followers Actually Listening?”

Jesse argues that one of the primary reasons most people use social networks is “to interact with new people and expand your current network of connections.” That makes sense. And if Jesse is right then that means most people’s friends lists are constantly expanding. And this poses a serious problem: all of our networks will eventually reach a tipping point where it’s just no longer feasible to really listen to what everyone in your network is saying.

We’re already beginning to hear a lot of people say that they feel like their conversations have begun to diminish in services like Twitter due in part to the fact that they are getting bogged down with too many updates. Yesterday FriendFeed gave us a look into how they are attempting to solve the problem by adding the ability to group your friends into lists. It’s a simple and effective solution.

Since Yoono aggregates all of your networks we are also wrestling with this very same problem, but on a larger level. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to listen to your networks and respond through the right channels. So we want to hear from you. How would you prefer to manage your contact lists? Would you like to be able to put any contact, no matter the social network, in a customizable list? Or do you prefer to keep your contacts listed by network?

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  • I would like to see a hybrid of the two.

    I want them by network but I also want a customizable list that crosses networks. That way if I wanted to see all my friends on my High school list, I could see all the high school friends on all the networks. Alternatively, if I am only needing those friends on a particular network, I can still do that.

    I would also like the lists to be expandable/collapsible

    On another note, I think the networks need to become proactive in preventing social mental fatigue as well, something I am suffering from. Some folks like to try out the latest and greatest features every time they come out.

    On Facebook there are at least two of everything and there are at least four "Hug" type programs. I have so many different requests from so many different people that I simply cannot keep up.

    Then too, is the invasion of privacy. This is because you don't want to hurt your friends feelings by rejecting them so you click to Accept the "Hug" for example, only to find out that you have to be willing to give the App Developer all kinds of personal information in order to complete the connection. God only knows what all they do with that information.

    In spite of so called Privacy and TOS statements, my spam has shot up exponentially when I starting using MySpace, then Twitter, then again with Facebook and SuperPoke Pets. Somebody is getting a hold of the email addresses some how.

    Okay, that was a bit off topic but still needs to be considered.
  • Amy Jo
    I would definitely like the option to custom sort my contacts. I would also like to be to personalize my contacts. For example, right now, when I pull over my IM contacts, it gives me the email address to see, but I'd like to put their name. I can do that in other programs like pidgin or adium (both allow a person to bring all their contacts into one place).
  • I think the google/gmail/bookmarks approach is best. I live that I can type or select to attach any number of category tags to a url, so why not the same with contacts. Obviously their first tag is their network (or networks, if the same person belongs to several), and then users add from there. Then you can sort every which way, making a multi-dimensional array instead of a list.
  • @Pastor Rick

    I completely agree. As of now, we have the My Stars, but essentially we are just creating another contact list, albeit a most likely smaller and therefore easier to manage list. But it's still linear and the problem of the ever expanding friend list still arises. I like your idea of the subsets, but we can possibly take it a step further and also think horizontally, like a matrix.

    What do you think Xavier, that shouldn't be too hard ;)

    (Talk about adding to the heap...)
  • I think all the posts thus far have hit on the same concept - a multi-faceted approach to categorize our contacts.

    One approach would be to simply emulate webmail. You caould use this as a base but build on it with search options. For example, if I have Christian friends, secular friends, business friends, family, etc.

    I would like to be able to address them personally, as a subgroup (Christians), as an entire group, or by a particular temporary sunset of each of the groups perhaps using something like your Stars. If you had a way to star people within each group who meet a particular interest, and address them as a subgroup for a particular interest that transcends each group. For example, people in each group which meet a particular interest that crosses group lines such as Republicans who are a part of different groups such as Christian friends, secular friends, business friends, family.

    Lofty concept I guess but I thought I would add it to the heap. :-)

    Pastor Rick
    Crosswayisp.net
  • Xavier
    @Karen : there is a way to achieve this in Yoono: you can set any contact as a "star". The contact will then appear on the "My Star" contact list, with all of its original network features (message sending, profile page opening, ...).

    It is not yet available as a one click option that display all of your contacts like that, but that also allows to put the people you interact the most with in a distinctive list.

    Let us know what you think about this !
  • You're exactly right about creating subsets. Facebook has this option, but there is no easy way to do it, which is the problem. I have way too many people to try to categorize one-by-one. Just the other day, I was trying to figure out how to assign people to a subset group I'd created and couldn't figure it out. My suggestion for Yoono--make it so easy my Grandma could do it. ;)

    One thing to remember is that no matter what option you offer, not everyone will like it. What about getting crazy and offering more than one option to your users. Allow us, the user, to decide if we want to see our contacts alphabetically, social network or any other way. To each his own, right?

    Personally, I'd love to see a list of my friends with icons for each of their networks I'm connected with. Then I can click the icon and be taken to that person's network/IM/whatever. Kinda like an address book...all info for one person is right there.

    Keep up the good work Yoono!
  • Thanks for the comments. I think that the bottom line is that we need to give users a streamlined way of managing all of their contacts while maintaining a certain amount of flexibility. On Louis' blog today (http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/08/10-big-su...) his 5th suggestion for creating custom subsets was spot-on. As social networks grow it will be very interesting to see how they attempt to accommodate users.
  • Excellent post. One suggestion I didn't mention in the post that I think Facebook does most effectively is to allow tagging - if I can tag individuals a message is intended for or I think you should be listening to, I think the problem goes away for the most part.
  • C
    This is a good point on social fatigue. I would personally like my contacts listed by name first and then by social network. The reason is that you may convene with the same people on different networks, and the type of network is only an enabler to the connection. Friendfeed does a good job of this, but I don't always want to broadcast everything that I do to everyone which is ultimately the point of FriendFeed.
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