social network – Climb to the Stars

Diigo — I Think I Like the Idea (Bonus Content: Conversation Fragmentation) [en]

[fr] Diigo semble être un outil de commentaire et de bookmarking social intéressant. Regardez les images si le texte vous rebute. En prime, petite digression sur la fragmentation des conversations.

I’m a bit of a [referrer obsessive](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunny/2444646183/), and today that little habit of mine led me to discover [Diigo](http://diigo.com), a social bookmarking tool which does way more than that. It seems at first view to be a mix of [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us) and what [coComment](http://cocomment.com) could have been, with a pinch of [MyBlogLog](http://mybloglog.com) and maybe [StumbleUpon](http://stumbleupon.com) thrown in.

[This is the link](http://www.diigo.com/01zr1) that led me to it. It’s pretty well-designed, because it immediately gave me an idea of what the service might be able to do for me. Look for yourself:

That’s the page that was bookmarked, with a “toolbar” (a fake one) on top. Close-up:

Oh-oh! I can bookmark, *highlight*, annotate, comment… sounds nice! If I scroll down [the page](http://www.diigo.com/01zr1), I get to see what “highlight” might look like:

That’s actually pretty good, because it allows me to **see** what I could get out of the service without having to sign up. Good marketing, guys and gals. Well, I don’t know about you, but that was enough for me to sign up and see what it was really about (specially as I’m keeping an eye open for something that could [replace what I use coComment for](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/04/19/more-on-cocomment-advertising/) — but it doesn’t seem this will be it, I’m afraid).

So, here goes. Sign-up was pretty straightforward. Sadly, Diigo commits the [password anti-pattern](http://adactio.com/journal/1357) crime, which **no social tool is allowed to do anymore** now that [Google has a password-free API](http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2008/03/3-2-1-contact-api-has-landed.html) to get around that (see [Flickr and Dopplr: the Right Way to Import GMail Contacts](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/04/09/flickr-and-dopplr-the-right-way-to-import-gmail-contacts/)). I’m from now on refusing to give my password to any “find your friends” interface, even if it makes my life more difficult. One has to take a stand, sometimes.

So, finding friends will be hard. Let’s have a look around, however. Diigo has a toolbar, which installed quite nicely. The FireFox add-on provides a side drawer for Diigo.

Amongst other things, this makes it easy to leave a comment on any page. A good point for Diigo: they make it possible to share annotations with non-users (which is how they got me interested, as I just explained). So for the comment in the screenshot above, I can get a “[share link](http://www.diigo.com/annotated/a0a33a0bc4ae67a60050cb5f8f05b7ba)”:

Which means people I give this link to get to see this:

Oh, and they have [OpenID](http://openid.net/) too! Another good point for them. In case it wasn’t clear from what I’ve already said, I think that leaving the functionalities of the tool **visible to non-users** like that is a great thing. It makes it easier to use for me when I don’t already have friends, and it allows people who haven’t joined yet to see more clearly what they might get out of doing so.

Back to the tour.

Diigo does bookmarking. I’ve been faithful to del.icio.us from the start, but it doesn’t mean I’m closed to switching if I find something better. If I can bookmark and post [Skitch](http://skitch.com/)-like sticky notes and comments on the web pages I’m bookmarking, well, that could win me over. First thing I checked, though, was import/export capability. One of the things I feel burnt with about my coComment experience is that there seems to be now way to leave *with my data* — so export is one of the first things I check before I consider using a new service I’m going to be storing data in.

Import is important, because if I’m going to switch to Diigo, I want to bring my past data in. Well, in that department, good marks:

And even better, the “save elsewhere” feature:

This means I can start saving my bookmarks to Diigo right away, and get Diigo to post them to del.icio.us. That way, it doesn’t break anything in the way I work — it just changes the input method and allows me to test a new tool “without risk”. Great.

I tried importing my bookmarks through the API and it seemed to stall in the middle:

I can’t say I’m wild about the amount of advertising on the site, but it seems in slighter good taste than [coComment](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/04/19/more-on-cocomment-advertising/) (I encountered a seizure-inducing vibrating banner ad on their site just minutes ago — but to say the good, I also discovered that they now support OpenID during that trip).

So, after the first import seemed to fail halfway, I followed Diigo’s advice and imported my bookmarks through the HTML export file del.icio.us provides. I got the following message:

…which made me fear I would end up with duplicates — but no, everything worked fine. It’s now possible to see my “[goingsolo+coverage](http://www.diigo.com/user/sbooth/goingsolo%2Ccoverage)” bookmarks on Diigo.

The interface is sometimes a bit difficult — I’ve found how to do things, but it doesn’t “flow” as easily as I’d expect it too. I guess they still could use some work there, and it sometimes has a feeling of “rough around the edges” (ie, import message that says things are ok when they aren’t, extra space in URL when filtering two different tags in bookmarks, chopped usernames under avatars…). This, for example, looks like it could use a bit more work in the design/usability department:

What would be really nice would be if Diigo could capture comments made in traditional commenting forms, in addition to letting me add “separate” comments:

This is important because comments made through normal commenting forms appear on the page immediately — so site owners aren’t going to get rid of them right away. I need to dig into what [Disqus](http://disqus.com/) is doing, though, haven’t yet had a close look. A bunch of people ([Loïc Le Meur](http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/03/my-social-map-i.html), [Louis Gray](http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/04/should-fractured-feed-reader-comments.html), [Stowe Boyd](http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2008/04/the-great-conve.html), amongst others) have been noting lately that conversation/commentary is moving away from blog comments.

**The conversation is now forked or fragmented**, something that [Ben Metcalfe noted as a problem with coComment, already at the time](http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2006/02/05/cocomment-semantically-forked-conversation/). I remember that at one point in time, the direction coComment was taking (with groups, mainly) was to abandon the idea of one conversation” and the move towards “multiple conversations” per post/page. I guess I never really liked that idea, because as a blogger before anything else, it’s important to me that *commentary* about what I publish can easily be found using the original post/video/whatever as a starting point.

On the other hand, I don’t believe in forcing people to use this or that system to leave their comments. Lots of people comment on my posts through Twitter, and that’s fine — but I regret there isn’t a system to indicate that those tweets are part of the commentary on this or that post. So, comment through Twitter, the comment form, Facebook, Diigo, on [my FriendFeed](http://friendfeed.com/sbooth) or on your own blog, even with a [Seesmic video comment](http://wiki.seesmic.com/Wp-plugin) if you want — but as a content provider, I’d like a way to collect all that commentary with a big net and display it on my blog post page.

Comments have more value when they are displayed alongside the content they’re referencing, but the process of leaving a comment should be tool-agnostic.

So anyway, end of bonus digression, and back to the Diigo tour. This Diigo thing is social, so I need to find friends. As I refuse to do the password-thingy, I tried typing a few names of superconnectors I know (Robert Scoble, Stowe Boyd, Michael Arrington, Chris Brogan… for starters). Only Arrington had an account, but it had one test bookmark and zero friends… not too good for a start.

I’d noticed the Diigo side drawer had a “Readers” tab. So I loaded up my blog in the browser, and scanned the [list of my readers](http://www.diigo.com/community/reader/climbtothestars.org) for known names (I figured I might know some of my readers). Lo and behold!

My friend [Thomas Vanderwal](http://vanderwal.net/random) was in the list. Here’s his bookmarks page:

(Note the “tasteful” German-language ad — because [I’m in Switzerland, I speak German, of course (not)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/03/04/not-all-switzerland-speaks-german-dammit/).)

I had to poke around a bit for the “ad friend” button, but finally found it on Thomas’s profile page:

Unfortunately, it seems not many people from “our bloggy-twitter circle” have joined yet — Thomas only has two friends, and I don’t know them (I think). Or Diigo need to work hard on their “finding friends and adding them” processes.

Well, there we are. Looks interesting. Will try to use it. More to be said of course, but already spent way too long on this “quick post with a few screenshots”!

If you join Diigo, [here’s my profile page](http://www.diigo.com/profile/sbooth) if you want to add me. Tell them I sent you! (Who was saying I should get paid to write this kind of stuff, already? ;-))

**Update:** Diigo isn’t new, though I don’t recall having ever heard of it. Seems Techcrunch mentioned it in [2005](http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/27/diigo/), [2006](http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/02/diigo-is-a-research-tool-that-rocks/), and again [last month](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/20/diigo-revamps-social-bookmarking-service-with-v30/). Maybe I should read Techcrunch more often 😉

FriendFeed Appeals to Women, Too! [en]

[fr] Quelques commentaires sur FriendFeed, un nouveau service de lifestreaming. Et en réaction à une liste de "blogueurs élite" quasi entièrement masculine, allez -- une liste de femmes de mon entourage qui sont sur FriendFeed.

*Scroll to the bottom of the post for **The List**.*

[Brian Solis on bub.blicio.us](http://bub.blicio.us/?p=781) joins [Louis Gray](http://www.louisgray.com) in commenting upon the fact that [“elite bloggers” are joining FriendFeed](http://louisgray.com/live/2008/03/elite-bloggers-joining-friendfeed-in.html) in respectable numbers. [FriendFeed](http://friendfeed) is a lifestreaming service, which allows you to aggregate all your online presence and publications in one place.

The first such application I bumped into was [Suprglu](http://steph.suprglu.com/) (just checked, it’s still running, wow!), [two years ago](http://steph.wordpress.com/2006/02/05/meet-suprglu/). I was happy with it for some time, and then disappointed that it had too much of a lag (they didn’t have much resources, at least at the time).

Then came [Jaiku](http://steph.jaiku.com/), which I liked, but I never quite got used to the layout and the fact that only titles were posted. [Tumblr](http://steph.tumblr.com/) entered my world at about the same time, and for a while, I wasn’t sure how to use both these tools without being redundant. I finally decided that [Tumblr wasn’t for lifestreaming](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/23/finally-getting-tumblr/). At that point I was also on [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=503315010), and the newsfeed there was pretty nice as a lifestreaming service. Then the apps arrived and [things started to get ugly](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/09/facebook-foire-aux-applications/) — but I still like my newsfeed, particularly as it does some editing for me (selecting stories I’m likely to find relevant, based on a magic mix of criteria including my “thumbs up/thumbs down” ratings on existing newsfeed elements).

Lifestreaming has two purposes:

– gather all my stuff in one place, so that I can point people to it
– gather all the stuff of all my friends in one place, so that I can follow them all together (this is more presence-like).

For the first, nothing beats (to this day) [Jeremy Keith’s lifestream](http://adactio.com/extras/stream/) in readability. I keep telling myself I need to [grab the code](http://adactio.com/journal/1202/) and do it for myself.

For the second, I’m ambivalent. I like jaiku, but I find it not very readable. The Facebook newsfeed is more readable and is edited down to a readable amount of information, but not everybody is on Facebook, and it’s not public. FriendFeed is promising, in that it’s rather easy to set up, but I don’t find it very readable, and it would need some editing features (so I can filter out stuff manually, of course, but also some automatic editing which I could turn on and off).

So, I like FriendFeed. I wish they’d make it easier to add people, though. One quick example. Here is a screenshot of the listing of my “followers” (=people who have subscribed to me):

There is no indication of if I’ve subscribed back or not. Compare with Twitter:

This, in my opinion, is a user interface problem that has been “solved”. If you create a new social tool, please don’t give us an interface which looks like it ignores existing solutions to obvious user headaches, like figuring out if you’re following back people who are following you (there is a higher chance that the people you want to follow will be amongst the people follow you already).

So, I’m looking forward to seeing where this will go. As such, I’m not actually using FriendFeed so much as sitting on it, waiting to see when it becomes usable.

**Coming back to the two posts I mentioned at the beginning of this article**, my initial reaction while going through the list of “elite bloggers” using FriendFeed was “hmm, I’m not in it”.

Well, of course. I mean, I’m quite lucid about the fact that all this blogging and online presence does have at stake (amongst other things) receiving a certain amount of recognition — and although I’m reasonably good at not letting this kind of motivation drive my activities. But it’s there, somewhere in the background. I’ve talked about this a lot in French, I realise — particularly in [interviews I’ve given to the press](/about/presse) and [talks](http://stephanie-booth.com/speaking) about blogging in general, but not much in English. Anyway, I’m not dwelling on this as it’s not my main point, but I always have this little secret hope (that I’m not overly proud of) that I’ll “make it” into this kind of listing. But enough with that.

My second reaction was: **where are the women?** Now, sorry to pull the whole “sexist” card — and those who know me are aware I’m far from a flag-carrying bra-burning feminist (though who knows, in another place and time, I might very well have ended up burning underwear in public) — but when lists of “influential/elite/top whatevers” show up and women are totally unrepresented in them, I think “ah, another guy who is mainly interested in what other guys have to say, and who might suggest at some point that we need to talk about the problem of ‘women in technology'”. *(Nothing personal, Louis — this is more about my reaction than about who you are.)*

So, in an attempt to encourage you to check out **some of the women in my world which I have found on FriendFeed**, here is a list of Some Women On FriendFeed. And yes, I’ve put myself in the list, of course. **Oh yeah, this *does* have a taste of linkbait.** But I won’t be offended if nobody picks it up. So, here goes.

– Ambiome / [Ambiome[Dot]Net](http://ambiome.net/blog)
[http://friendfeed.com/ambiome](http://friendfeed.com/abiome)
– Cathy Brooks / [other than that…](http://www.otherthanthat.com/)
[http://friendfeed.com/cathybrooks](http://friendfeed.com/cathybrooks)
– danah boyd / [apophenia](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/)
[http://friendfeed.com/zephoria](http://friendfeed.com/zephoria)
– Dannie Jost / [uncondition](http://uncondition.blogspot.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/dannie](http://friendfeed.com/dannie)
– Dori Smith / [Backup Brain](http://backupbrain.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/dori](http://friendfeed.com/dori)
– Emily Chang / [Strategic Designer](http://emilychang.com/go)
[http://friendfeed.com/emilychang](http://friendfeed.com/emilychang)
– Gabriela Avram / [CONIECTO](http://coniecto.blogspot.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/coniecto](http://friendfeed.com/coniecto)
– Gia Milinovich / [Gia’s blog](http://www.giagia.co.uk/)
[http://friendfeed.com/giagia](http://friendfeed.com/giagia)
– Hillary Hartley / [static{fade}](http://staticfade.blogspot.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/quepol](http://friendfeed.com/quepol)
– Laura Fitton / [Pistachio Consulting](http://pistachioconsulting.com/blog/)
[http://friendfeed.com/pistachio](http://friendfeed.com/pistachio)
– Lilia Efimova / [Mathemagenic](http://blog.mathemagenic.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/mathemagenic](http://friendfeed.com/mathemagenic)
– Lisa McMillan / [Lisa McMillan dot com](http://lisamcmillan.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/lisamac](http://friendfeed.com/lisamac)
– Nicole Simon / [Cruel to be Kind](http://crueltobekind.org)
[http://friendfeed.com/nicolesimon](http://friendfeed.com/nicolesimon)
– Stephanie Booth / [Climb to the Stars](http://climbtothestars.org)
[http://friendfeed.com/sbooth](http://friendfeed.com/sbooth) *whoops, sbooth, not steph!*
– Suw Charman-Anderson / [Strange Attractor](http://strange.corante.com/)
[http://friendfeed.com/suw](http://friendfeed.com/suw)
– Tara Hunt / [HorsePigCow](http://horsepigcow.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/missrogue](http://friendfeed.com/missrogue)
– Virginie Pfeiffer / [Mistress of the Web](http://mistressoftheweb.wordpress.com)
[http://friendfeed.com/vivipfeif](http://friendfeed.com/vivipfeif)

*Self-promotion: follow me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/stephtara) or [FriendFeed](http://friendfeed.com/steph) and don’t forget to [blog about](http://going-solo.net/support/) [Going Solo](http://going-solo.net), or even [register](http://going-solo.net/registration)!*

Being Lifter 20: I'm the "Star" Networker! [en]

[fr] Après LIFT l'an dernier, un questionnaire a été soumis au participants dans le but de déterminer quel impact la conférence avait eu sur leur réseau. J'y ai répondu, avec 27 autres personnes (un assez petit échantillon, à mon avis). Il se trouve que je suis la "super-réseauteuse" de l'étude. Quelques remarques.

Eleven months ago, I [participated and encouraged you to participate in a survey](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/02/16/lift07-social-networking-map-experiment/) which aimed to map social networking between participants of the [LIFT’07 conference](http://2007.liftconference.com/). As I was browsing around after submitting my [workshop proposal](http://www.liftconference.com/get-started-blogging), I saw that [the report based on that survey](http://intelligentmeasurement.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/conference-evaluation-and-network-mapping/) had been published. On the LIFT site, you can see [screenshots of the graphs](http://www.liftconference.com/lift-will-double-your-network) (yes, this is what I call a “social graph”!) before and after the conference.

Go and look.

Notice the node somewhat to the left, that seems to be connected to a whole bunch of people? Yeah, that’s me. I’m “lifter 20”. How do I know? Well, not hard to guess — I have a rather atypical profile compared to the other people who took the survey.

So, as the “star” networker in this story, I do have a few thoughts/comments on some of the conclusions drawn from the survey. Don’t get me wrong — I think it’s very interesting, and that we need this kind of research (and more of it!) but as [Glenn](http://intelligentmeasurement.files.wordpress.com) says himself in the [1Mb PDF report](http://intelligentmeasurement.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/lift07_networkmapping_report_owlre_final1.pdf), it’s important to bear in mind the limitations of this study. (All the quotes in this blog post are taken form the PDF, unless I say otherwise.)

> The limitations of this study needs to be understood before considering the findings: This
study maps networks from the point of view of the 28 participants. Consequently, it is
only a partial map of the networks established at LIFT07.

In this study, I’m the “star” networker: the person with the most connections before and after the conference.

> Before the conference, participant Lifter20 had the largest network (59 attendees)
which was increased by 25 attendees after the conference.

Bearing that in mind, I would personally have removed myself from the “average” calculations (I don’t think that was done), because I’m too a-typical compared to the other people in the survey. Typically, I would find it interesting to be given figures with extremes removed here:

> There was a large range in the size of the individual networks before LIFT07 (from 0 to
59) and a smaller range in the number of people added to networks after the conference
(from 0 to 28). However, on average, participants had seven people in their network
before LIFT07 and added nine more people after the conference – leading to the
conclusion that people at least doubled their network by attending LIFT07.

As mentioned earlier, 28 people took the survey. I know I’m not the most networked person at LIFT. In my “network of red nodes” (people not in the survey) there are people like [Robert Scoble](http://scobleizer.com), Stowe Boyd, or Laurent Haug — who clearly did not take the survey, or I wouldn’t be the “star networker” here. So, they are a little red node somewhere in the graph. Which makes me take the following remark with a big grain of salt:

> Before the conference, several “red” attendees (i.e. those attendees nominated as
part of the network of the 28 participants) were significant relay nodes in the network
receiving considerable incoming links – notably the red node to the right of Lifter 12
and the red node to the left of Lifter 16. In both cases, the number of links to these
nodes increased after the conference.

What’s missing here is that these red nodes might very well be super networkers like Stowe or Robert. The fact they receive significant incoming links would then take a different meaning: only a very small part of their role in the global LIFT networking ecosystem is visible. (Yes, the study here only talks about a small part of this ecosystem, but it’s worth repeating.)

I think that most heavy networkers are not very likely to fill in such a survey. The more people you know, the more time it takes. I’m easily a bit obsessive, and I think this kind of study is really interesting, so I took the trouble to do it — but I’m sure many people with a smaller network than mine didn’t even consider doing it because it’s “too much work”. I suspect participation in such a survey is skewed towards people with smaller networks (“sure, I just know 5-10 people, I’ll quickly fill it in”).

Here’s a comment about the ratio of new contacts made during LIFT’07:

> For example, the “star” networker, Lifter20 has a ratio of 1:0.4. In
other words, for every third person in her existing network, she met one new person.
Whereas, Lifter18 had the highest ratio of 1:7. In other words, for every person in her
existing network, she met seven new people.

I think it’s important to note that, as I said in [my previous post about this experiment](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/02/16/lift07-social-networking-map-experiment/), knowing many people from the LIFT community beforehand, the increase in my network (proportionally) was bound to be less impressive, than, say, when I came to LIFT’06 two years ago (I basically knew 3 people before going: Anne Dominique, Laurent, Marc-Olivier — and maybe Roberto… and walked out with *a ton* of new people). I’m sure [Dunbar’s number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar’s_number) kicks in somewhere too, and I would expect that the more people you know initially, the lower your ratio of new contacts should be.

On page 8 of the survey there is a list of participants and the number of before/after contacts they entered in the survey. So, if you took the survey and have a rough idea of how many people you knew before LIFT, and how many you met there, you should be able to identify who you are.

This is interesting:

> The “star” networker, Lifter 20 had seven links to other participants before LIFT07
which grew to ten after the conference, giving her the most central position in the
network of participants.

So, basically, 10 people I know took the survey — out of 28 total. I know I blogged about the survey and actively encouraged people in my network to take it. This would skew the sample, of course, making it closer to “my network at LIFT”. If we know each other and you took the survey, can you identify which number you are? it would be interesting to put faces on the numbers to interpret the data (for me, in any case, as I know the people). For example, if you’re a person I brought to LIFT, chances are your “new connections” will overlap mine quite a bit — more than if you came to LIFT independently.

A chapter of the report is devoted to the “star” networker (in other words, little me).

> Interestingly, many of the
people that she connected to, both before and after LIFT07, were not part of the
networks of the other 27 participants of the study, indicating a certain isolation of parts of
her network.

> […]

> Before the conference, a significant number of contacts (35) of Lifter20 had no
connections with any of the other 27 participants of the study.

> After the conference, a number of contacts (14) made by Lifter20 had no connections
with any of the other 27 participants of the study.

The first remark be turned the other way: maybe all these “unconnected” people are actually quite connected within the “global LIFT network”, and it is the *sample* of 28 people who answered the survey which have isolated networks. Of course, isolation is a relative notion, but the way things are phrased here makes it look like I have an isolated network… which I don’t really believe to be the case — a great part of my network is actually very interconnected, only it doesn’t show in the graph because the people in question did not take the survey. My friend wheel (see screenshot) from Facebook gives a better impression of what it looks like. (No, no, I’m not taking this personally! I’m not.)

> Lifter20 shares a number of contacts with one other participant (Lifter13 – the blue
node horizontally to the right in the “after” diagram).

Who is Lifter 13? (14 before, met 7 at LIFT’07) Somebody I knew before LIFT’07. I’m curious.

I’d also love to know who Lifter 18 (the “booster” networker) and Lifter 11 (the “clique” networker) were, though the graph indicates I know neither.

In conclusion, I’d say this is a really interesting study, but the anonymized data would gain to be interpreted in the light of who the actual people were and what their networks were like. I think it would allow to evaluate where this kind of analysis works well and works less well.

I think 28 people is a rather small sample for such a study — it’s a pity more people didn’t participate in the survey. How could we motivate people to participate? I think one of the issues, mainly, is that people don’t *get* anything directly out of participating. So… maybe some goodie incentive for doing it, next time? Also, I remember the interface was a bit raw. What I did is go through the participant list and type the names. It’s almost impossible to just think back at “so, who did I meet at LIFT this year?” — either you’re going to take a stack of business cards your brought home, or you’re going to go through a list and see what names ring a bell.

Maybe the survey organisation could take that into account. Provide participants in the survey with a (searchable, ajaxy) list of attendees with checkboxes. Then you could add smart stuff to help out like Dopplr’s “travellers you may know” (based on a “contacts of your contacts” algorithm).

Facebook, foire aux applications [fr]

[en] Facebook has become a gigantic app-fest, and I regret it. Many newcomers around me see only that, and fail to understand where Facebook's real value lies. Not in the Vampires, Superwalls, or Secret Crushes. But in the network of people you have there, and what you can do with them: plan events, share online doings, or discover more about them.

Facebook se répand comme une trainée de poudre en Suisse Romande. J’y retrouve donc des amis “offline” qui souvent, m’avouent ne pas trop y comprendre. Ils reçoivent des tas d’invitations pour toutes sortes de choses, qu’ils acceptent, passent plus loin — mais pour être honnête, ça lasse vite, ce genre de jeu.

Quand je lis des articles dans la presse au sujet de Facebook, même topo: tout est centré sur les fameuses applications, qui permettent de jouer aux Vampires, de comparer ses goûts musicaux, et de découvrir qui a secrètement flashé sur nous. Mais que se passe-t-il donc? Est-ce si superficiel que ça, Facebook?

Même si Facebook est devenu célèbre (médiatiquement) dans un deuxième temps grâce à sa plate-forme d’applications, ce n’est pas ce qui m’a attirée vers ce réseau social. J’y étais “avant les apps”, moi 😉

Facebook, c’est tout d’abord un splendide carnet d’adresses des toutes mes connaissances (moins celles qui résistent encore et toujours à l’envahisseur, bien entendu). Un “facebook”, littéralement: un carnet de visages, un répertoire de mes amis et d’informations à leur sujet.

C’est ensuite un endroit où je peux faire circuler l’essentiel de mes activités numériques: j’y centralise des alertes concernant la publication de billets (comme celui-ci), mes [tweets](http://twitter.com/stephtara), et quelques mots d’humeur parfois un peu plus privés.

En retour, si mes amis font de même, Facebook me fournit via mon “News Feed” les nouvelles de mon monde. Qui a publié quoi, qui est où, qui a rejoint quel groupe. Bref, un condensé de nouvelles provenant de mon réseau social. Et Facebook fait ça intelligemment: je peux lui dire quel genre d’informations je préfère voir, et lesquelles m’indiffèrent. Je peux choisir de mettre en avant certaines personnes, recevant un plus grand nombre de leurs nouvelles — ou moins, pour d’autres. Et maintenant, je peux même indiquer, pour chaque information publiée dans mon News Feed, si je suis contente ou non que Facebook me l’ai servie.

Mais là où Facebook bat tous les autres réseaux, c’est pour la gestion des événements. Il est hyper facile de mettre sur pied un événement et d’y inviter ses amis. Je l’ai fait pour [WPD et WoWiPAD](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/). On peut aussi facilement mettre en avant un billet publié, un événement, ou une photo en les partageant, soit sur son profil, soit en privé via un message à un ami ou plusieurs.

Ça me désole de voir que pour tant de monde, Facebook se résume à une “foire aux applications”. Il faut dire que la plupart sont bien conçues, vous invitant sans arrière-pensée à spammer vos amis pour qu’eux aussi aient un Superwall et un Funwall (j’en peux plus de ces deux, arrêtez, s’il vous plaît). Oui, bien sûr, c’est nul, toutes ces applications. La plupart n’ont aucun intérêt ou presque.

On retiendra tout de même: Scrabulous, pour jouer au Scrabble (en français aussi!), Books, pour partager vos lectures, et si vous utilisez des services comme Twitter, Dopplr, Pownce, Flickr — installez sans hésiter les applications Facebook qui y correspondent.

Si vous débarquez sur Facebook, souvenez-vous: l’intérêt n’est pas dans l’accumulation des applications diverses sur votre profil, qui finira par ressembler à un sapin de Noël surchargé et bariolé. Facebook, c’est avant tout un lieu de contact avec ceux que vous connaissez, de près ou de loin selon vos goûts. Alors oui, ce contact peut être ludique (certaines applications le sont) — mais il ne faut pas aller par-dessus-bord non plus.

Ah, les fameux “friends”. Sur internet, dès qu’on se connaît, on est amis, n’est-ce pas? C’est peut-être vrai dans les premiers élans de découverte d’un nouveau réseau social, mais quand on commence à avoir quelques centaines “d’amis”, le terme perd son sens. Et si on est quelqu’un de sociable, dont le réseau est passablement présent sur internet (comme moi), on y arrive vite, aux quelques centaines de contacts. Notez que je dis “contacts”.

C’est pour ça que cette nouvelle fonctionnalité de Facebook, qui permet de [faire des listes d’amis](http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7831767130), est un pas en avant super important. J’en ai parlé longuement en anglais: nous avons besoin de pouvoir [contrôler plus finement ce que nous dévoilons](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/16/ethics-and-privacy-in-the-digital-age/) de notre sphère privée. En d’autres mots, nous avons besoin de pouvoir [apporter une structure à nos réseaux sociaux en ligne](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/16/we-need-structured-portable-social-networks-spsn/) — car notre réseau social a une structure. Tous ne sont pas égaux, parmi ceux que l’on connaît. Il y a les amis proches, la famille, les collègues — ceux avec qui on va manger à midi, mais aussi ceux à qui on ne parle presque pas, les copines du jeudi soir, les amis d’école perdus de vue, les personnes qu’on aimerait mieux connaître… etc. On retrouve ce besoin dans [l’histoire récente au sujet de Google Reader](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/04/desinformation-en-20-secondes-google-reader/): on veut [plus de granularité](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/granular-privacy-control-gpc/) pour ce qui est “privé”. Pour le moment, c’est un peu tout ou rien. Soit c’est privé, soit c’est public.

Un jour, et c’est ce que j’essayais d’expliquer [dans le Grand 8 du 1er janvier](http://info.rsr.ch/fr/rendez-vous/Les_hackers_informatiques_ne_sont_pas_forcement_mauvais.html?siteSect=1001&sid=8581901&cKey=1199111430000&bcItemName=le_grand_8&broadcastId=545429&broadcastItemId=8486271&rubricId=8888&programId=110451&bcItemName=le_grand_8), on pourra régler finement qui a accès à quoi dans ce que l’on publie, en fonction de comment on “classifie” (bien mauvais terme, je vois plutôt ça se passer avec des tags) les gens de notre réseau. Alors certes, on n’en est pas là avec Facebook. Pour le moment, vos “listes d’amis” vous permettent simplement de les inviter en bloc ou de leur envoyer un message commun facilement. L’interface pour placer les personnes dans les listes est également trop encombrante. Mais c’est un pas dans la bonne direction.

J’attends, retenant mon souffle, qu’on puisse faire quelque chose d’utile avec ces “listes d’amis”. Si Facebook rate cette coche, qu’importe — un autre réseau social le fera. Et croyez-moi, celui qui implémentera ce genre de fonctionnalité correctement aura une bonne longueur d’avance sur les autres.

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts:

Similar Posts: