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Facebook’s Killer Feature Coming Soon

Started by Nick O'Neill · 3 months ago

Back in August I suggested that if Facebook allowed you to place your friends in specific groups (e.g. professional, social, family, etc) and assign custom privacy settings, LinkedIn would be doomed. While Facebook is going to have to work toward putting an end to LinkedIn, they have ... Continue reading »

18 comments

  • mike

    1 year ago

    I think it'll take a lot more than this new feature to make me move from linkedin.

    Whilst grouping will be useful for facebook, where i live, in the UK, I can see this being used to group those people who you actually know (groups of true deep friendships or a group of casual acquaintances) versus those that just want to be your "friend" although you have never met them and probably never will (myspace behaviour)

    Also I see a lot of activity on facebook really geared towards showing off and seeing who can show to be the most outrageous person or cool person or who drank the most. I dont think that this activity works too well for serious business networking.

    Mike
    reply
  • Mark

    1 year ago

    Mike, I think you mighta missed the point of Neil's post!
    reply
  • Tom

    1 year ago

    I don’t know. I do agree that this is a crucial feature for Facebook but they really are playing with fire at the same time. This is exactly the type of change that could break untold numbers of Facebooks apps and turn into a publicity nightmare before you know it. I hate to criticize people who are trying to do the right thing I just think they made a much larger mistake than they know when they didn’t include something like this from the start.

    Fixing that mistake is going to be a lot harder than just adding a new feature.

    As far as LinkedIn, the reality is that Facebook has a big tech following but most people in other business areas don’t take it too seriously. It’s the equivalent of MySpace in that they see it as more of a kid’s toy. LinkedIn on the other hand has a reputation as a network for making business connections and I think that marketing advantage will be enough to keep them alive for years to come.
    reply
  • Miiko

    1 year ago

    That's great news! I was originally trying to keep my FB among friends and not have colleagues or clients on it, but as time goes by it's proving to be more difficult, especially for those who are both colleagues and friends (that gray area). Being able to have this feature would be great.

    As for getting rid of my LinkedIn profile. I wouldn't be so quick to do that as I do get business leads from it and I'm all about networking in as many places as I can when it comes to driving more business my way or to my friends for those leads that I’m not interested in.

    I'm looking forward to seeing this new FB feature!
    reply
  • Mike Butcher

    1 year ago

    Nice try Nick but I think you're wrong. Yes, it would be handy to gradate contacts on Facebook. But Facebook's business model is all about locking you in. LinkedIn's model is about functional business networking. To that end I can download a big VCF file of all my contacts on LI. But I can do nothing like this on FB, and if they allowed it, it would mean I could up sticks and leave with my network intact. Hence they will never do it and hence why LI is in no way over. Yet.
    reply
  • Louis Gray

    1 year ago

    LinkedIn is for professionals.
    Facebook is for fun.

    That's not going to change, even with categories. And LinkedIn can add categories as well. It's not that big a deal.
    reply
  • Nick O'Neill

    1 year ago

    Wow, I definitely didn't expect this type of response. On the last post I made, everyone seemed to agree, this time around there is some backlash. Is this going to receive the same type of backlash as the newsfeed had?

    Honestly, I think they can do this without significantly impacting the user experience on the site.

    Mike, someone has already made an application so that you can export your Facebook contacts and sync them with outlook:
    http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?i...

    While it isn't fully featured it definitely comes close. There is no way that people are going to run to another social network if Facebook allows you to export your contacts. Sorry!
    reply
  • Cappy Popp

    1 year ago

    You can already do this, and more, with Facebook’s Inner Circle application. It lets you group your friends into private groups, called Circles, and additionally lets you share information with them from outside of Facebook (like RSS feeds), as well as chat directly with groups of them instead of individually using Facebook. Check it out…
    reply
  • howardlindzon

    1 year ago

    i had stopped a while ago :)
    reply
  • yawn

    1 year ago

    It is not about a feature, it is about utility. And that is a function of how the community perceives and adopts the feature.
    reply
  • Alexey Komissarouk

    1 year ago

    Appreciate the props Nick :D.

    Inner Circle moves in the right direction, but the sort of power that grouping friends requires, taking into account the privacy settings requirements, can only realistically be implemented by Facebook itself.

    Looking forward to it :)
    reply
  • Stephanie Booth

    1 year ago

    I **really** hope that this is going to be a groupings feature, and not groups where one person can be in one and only one group. Or where you have to create groups and then stick people in them.

    Tagging, please. Please.
    reply
  • John Cunningham

    1 year ago

    Stephanie I have been using apps.facebook.com/innercircle for a week or so. It already supports grouping and it even lets you have conversations with your groups and check out all their email and status on a per group basis.

    I wonder what will become of applications like this one with Facebook reimplementing everyones features.
    reply
  • Craig Lu

    1 year ago

    The main point is, will this new feature attract recruiters, hiring managers or even general business crowd to Facebook. Currently Facebook is gettting too cluttered. They are trying to do everything. Don't believe me. Try searching for "Microsoft" on the search tool. You will get hundreds of entries..no specifics. Facebook was setup to connect with friends. They should keep it that way. No matter what, they cannot compete with Linkedin and NetHooks. These sites are catered specifically for professional contact. All parties coming into the site know what they are getting into which is professional networking.

    For students in facebook, very high percentage will not use the tool to separate business contacts.. most of them will use to separate their friends into different categories.
    reply
  • Scott Bradley

    1 year ago

    I can't wait for this feature!
    reply
  • Tom

    1 year ago

    Ehh... I disagree completely.

    Various social networks have some common and some unique FEATURES, but that's not what makes them special, it's the USERS that matter far more.

    The top three social networks these days all started with different type of core user. They represent a very diverse spectrum of web users:

    LinkedIn was for professionals, Facebook was for college students, and MySpace was for bands, teens, and perverts.

    As others have noted, simply adding one or two new features to any of them isn't going to change the culture and stigma of a social network.

    That said, it's a nice feature and is certainly can't hurt. I don't foresee any kind of "backlash" against this type of feature, unlike the News Feeds (although that backlash seems to have fizzled a couple months later)
    reply
  • Adam Snider

    1 year ago

    This is a feature that I've been hoping to see for quite a while. I don't know if this will kill LinkedIn, but it definitely poses a very real threat.
    reply
  • Scott Allen

    1 year ago

    I think that's a tremendously useful feature, and I continue to be impressed by the technical innovation coming from Facebook.

    But asking me if that would make me "switch" to Facebook from LinkedIn is like asking me if I would switch from BNI to the Chamber of Commerce if the Chamber started having weekly meetings, or if I'd stop visiting my favorite Mexican restaurant because my favorite Italian restaurant starts serving Mexican food. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose they're all competing for our attention, but it's still the people, not the technology, that provide the most value, and I see absolutely no compelling reason to devote all of my attention in one place.
    reply

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