Facebook lists: Bye bye Google Circles
So, last week I had a rant that Google+ will not cause the instant demise of FB and one of my points was that Facebook are smart and they’ll respond…Well they have. Already.
Tonight I discovered Facebook ‘lists’ which directly combats the Google+-Circle-mania that’s been going on. But it’s a whole bunch better because FB knows so much about YOU that it can recommend lists (i.e. your work place, or your suburb) and who’s on them. (Seems to have been rolling out over the last 6 days)
This is FB’s second attempt at grouping contacts, their first was back in 2007 and didn’t really get traction.
From what I can see there are a few standard ‘friend lists’
- Close friends
- Family
- Work
- High-school/University/College
- Who live near you
Here are some examples that came up for me…
It’s also integrated into your friend’s profile pages, suggesting which list they fit into if you haven’t assigned them already.
And it’s very helpful when creating lists
Hmmm… Google+ destroy’s Facebook? Anyone?
I also read an article tonight from ReadWriteWeb with “5 Things Google Plus Can Do To Outbox Facebook“ which provides some interesting observations. However, the FIVE things will really only bring G+ up to speed with FB, not outbox them.
Yes I saw that today too, interesting.
IMO its not about G+ or FB but about Google adwords vs facebook ads.
Which will find it easier to own space and complete the circle (no pun intended)with search and social and who will get their first. Personally I can’t see facebook owning search but I can see Google ads providing social targeting.
This I think will fundamentally make the difference between who has the lions share.
At this point there is no serious motivation to be on G+ other than “get in early” but at some point I think the sleeping dragon will be awoken.
For the record, I still use my facebook
You just found lists…. I have been using lists on fb for years, a couple of iterations ago, fb had them as a focus on the lhs, but removed them.
I still use them, I add everyone to at least 5 lists. Fb just made them more obvious again.
Mind, I have about 50 different lists, for all different social groups and circles, fb only shows about 5 of them when I want to limit my friends using a list, which kind of defeats the purpose of going to all that effort of adding people, I would love to export my lists to google+ as I think they will get it right.
I couldn’t wait to get onto Google+… only to find it’s empty, have only been back a handful of time since to see if it had changed!
I think the lists are useless, do I really want to have to put every friend in a bucket of governed content and access? I’m not sure I’m interested just yet. Maybe I can be convinced in the future…
The concept, of course, is great in theory, who wouldn’t want to have the power to customise their friends experience, but in reality, I can’t see it working. I found myself placing everyone into the same circle on G+ which is pretty pointless.
From purely the end users perspective and user requirements, both these approaches – Lists and Circles – are constraining approaches and not the best way to group contacts and filter the sharing and following options.
There must be different approach than the current bucketing approach. I have written about the bucket vs tag approach for managing friends list and feed filtering here http://rohanrao.com/facebook-lists-and-google-circles-the-bucket-approach-and-how-it-fails/
Would love to have your thoughts.
Cheers ~
Thank you for finding that Facebook list link. I’ve been using the ‘Friends’ and ‘Limited Profile’ distinction since I joined in 2007, and when those lists became available, I set up several more. I just couldn’t remember when they came out—so your link came in handy.
The one annoying thing about these new pre-named lists is that they duplicate what I already have. I know Facebook says I can combine them, but I don’t have any guarantee that this won’t reveal past statuses that I hid from any one group.