Explanation for "Send a Friend Request" +7
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I'd like to see there be the option for adding in more information when sending a friend request. right now, you just click on the link and you've invited someone to be your friend, or they've invited you to be their friend. but there is no context, there's no way to know anything about WHY this request is happening.
i wonder about how we become friends in the onlife world and how different it is in this context. there's usually some kind of introduction that's made in onlife and from there you carry on.
i believe having some kind of additional functionality here (a simple text box for more information would suffice) would help create more quality webs of relationships. it's not how many connections you have but what's the quality of those connections or the value of those connections. i've had a stream of people ask me to be friends and i don't know them and have no idea why they would want to be my friends. that's great and maybe it makes us feel great to have 300 friends (like facebook, etc.), but i really believe there is a power to the quality of the connections we are making in this web of relationships known as WE.
It could be as simple as what the ning network uses:
http://openmoney.ning.com/main/invitation/new
i wonder about how we become friends in the onlife world and how different it is in this context. there's usually some kind of introduction that's made in onlife and from there you carry on.
i believe having some kind of additional functionality here (a simple text box for more information would suffice) would help create more quality webs of relationships. it's not how many connections you have but what's the quality of those connections or the value of those connections. i've had a stream of people ask me to be friends and i don't know them and have no idea why they would want to be my friends. that's great and maybe it makes us feel great to have 300 friends (like facebook, etc.), but i really believe there is a power to the quality of the connections we are making in this web of relationships known as WE.
It could be as simple as what the ning network uses:
http://openmoney.ning.com/main/invitation/new
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"Part 2" is a different suggestion that I'm not sure we're ready for. Bowo's suggestion for a space to display friends you are in common with, would be a nice way for people to introduce themselves to others. I am against a "top friends" feature...this is a way to encourage users to display all of their "hot friends" for example, and I see people end up thinking too much about which friends are "more important" to them...its a time-suck, and sometimes...even peoples' feelings are hurt.
"why are people just adding others as friends without messaging first or having established some sort of relationship beforehand?" Adding friends gives my presence free publicity. If I'm not really "friends" with someone, at least their profile can help "advertise" my own. This is what goes down... in social networking. |
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In a sense, we have this "description" feature in place. It's not as readily visible since we changed the adding people to your network to a permission based feature. If you were to go into your network by clicking on List, you'd see people you are connected to and people you've sent an invite to. Under each person's avatar, there should be an "edit relationship" feature, where you describe your connection to that person.
However, the comments here seem to be split into two parts, as Sheri paraphrased better than I could: 1) what you can do before connecting to a user to better explain why you're doing it, and 2) after that data has been inputted, what connections the system can draw together and present back to the user. The first one is a bit easier to tackle, but it also brings into question ease of use. We could certainly pop up a dialog box when you click on the send a friend request that allows you enter information in your request. It just means there will be extra steps needed to add someone as a friend. As for part 2, that does require some serious thinking and development. Developing a sort of artificial intelligence for the platform requires us to examine what conditions we want to weight more heavily than others. With Bowo's idea, it requires us examining what counts as 'an interaction", and which ones should be factored more heavily. But there is some hesitance in me to go down this development path, if only because I want to be sure there's functional value in showcasing a "core" group of friends over others. Does it feed into collaboration? Does it make your network section more valuable to use? Understandably, you can see how this becomes a project proposal of sorts, and no longer just a simple suggestion. But I'm all for it, because I think these ideas are very innovative. I also like to throw in one thing into the ring - why are people just adding others as friends without messaging first or having established some sort of relationship beforehand? That might be related to social networking phenomenon, but I do know that I don't readily accept friend requests unless I've talked to that person before. And btw, declining a person's request doesn't send out any notification, so you don't have to worry about them receiving a "denial" message of any sorts. :) |
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One thing,
I was out on NED and saw where each visitor when making a comment would allocate a positive or a negative feedback code for example +1, +2 or -1, -2 giving degrees of positive or negative well perhaps the same can be done here only instead of a positive or negative code the ranking would indicate a level of priority in the transaction or first runner up or second runner up that sort of thing denoting a ranking order of things. This may do as well for that friends situation where the why maynot be so so important but the allocation of priority of communication or the operational level of friendship given the tasking associated with the individual might be a better marker given the numbers of people on or across the system. I thought I would through this out here. Randy |
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bowo
i like your distinctions and the different needs of users. your suggestion: "Another idea: Can we insert codes into WE's software to automatically calculate the number of "interactions" between two users, and show them under the avatars in the profile page (similar to those in the group's member section but with different colour and meaning)? This way, the randomly shuffled "Friends" section of the profile page can still dig out 10 of the many friends we have, show the quality of connection we have with each of them, and thus, encourage us to put more time to make the connection higher in quality. is interesting. i like it. set up another suggestion for it. there are two different topics here though: (1) being able to let the person you want to be friends with WHY you are doing this in the first place. i have received numerous friend invitations by people i don't know and i don't even have a bio on my page. it confuses me actually and i'm a gregarious, people-loving, networking queen :) so something feels odd to me. i'm not into more is better and i don't want to feel that i have to be put into that category. even though YES all these beautiful wiserearthlings are wonderful and i can't be friends with all of them. relationships are meaningful and from them we create our world. it is not just more is better. i really feel that there is a value system in operation with this and maybe i don't understand social networking online enough. i think i need to do some research and ask around...on this. and i keep coming back to what is Wiser's identity. what makes it NOT another myspace, facebook, social networking site. AND, i believe that there is magic in those friends you meet who you didn't know who open up interesting doors. i'm not wanting to close the door on that. that's why i like the idea of creating more substance behind the invitation process. we want to encourage more meaningful connections on wiser, more meaningful conversations. (2) supporting different types of connections and being to identify those differences. being able to see what is the degree of separation between you and this new person might be quite interesting. 6 degrees of separation tool? |
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Let's encourage even more quality vs quantity on this site.
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I am all for this one.
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I usually send a message prior to or simultaneously with asking someone to be a friend. Making it a precondition to be able to send a friend invitation is a good idea.
Maybe upon clicking the "Send a friend request", a small pop-down box just below the link/avatar to write introductory notes would be nice and intuitive. To make it more meaningful, we may need to add a "minimum number of characters" in the introduction, before we can invite that person. On the more optimistic side, we can consider having many "friends" (say 1000), even if we only came into contact with 90% of them once in a discussion forum, or anywhere within WE, to be a "long tail" effect phenomena in the social networking world. Where that single instance of contact, though producing only an insignificant amount of information/opinion exchange, if it benefits both party, should be considered as a "good" connection/relationship (when compared to none). I haven't spend much time with facebook, myspace and the like, but to my knowledge, they have a "hot friends" or "featured friends" section in their personal profile page to acknowledge the "more meaningful" relationships. I read somewhere though, that the theoretical limit for meaningful and deep relationship is with 150 people at any given moment. So, accommodating those who think "quality of connection" important, and the younger "would be" users of WiserEarth who fancy many friends even with "low quality of connection", a kind of "featured friends" section in the profile page may be needed in the future. Another idea: Can we insert codes into WE's software to automatically calculate the number of "interactions" between two users, and show them under the avatars in the profile page (similar to those in the group's member section but with different colour and meaning)? This way, the randomly shuffled "Friends" section of the profile page can still dig out 10 of the many friends we have, show the quality of connection we have with each of them, and thus, encourage us to put more time to make the connection higher in quality. Just another idea for the day. |
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I have to agree. It would be nice to have more information about why a person wants to add you as a friend. On the one hand you think: I don't know that person, why should I want to be friends, but on the other hand you think: well, I don't want to be rude and you take the request. Only once you are friends that is basically it. Adding some quality sounds like a good idea.
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Friending is really specific to each Social Network site and its norms. Facebook actually is more restrained than MySpace, and WE more still. I suspect at least in the short term many people will keep several Social network's going - one for work and one for play (sort of like two email addresses). WE is more about serious things / work - for sure its definiately not going to overpower Facebook and MySpace for play!
I would caution against automatically assigning friend relationship based on a codec - acknowledging the friendship seems to me to be required. That doesn't mean we can't behind the scenes recommend content or a potential person to friend with (match making service) based on relationships a user has not made explicit. Probably worth waiting on Part 2 until we have the ranking / recommending functionality up. That will integrate with this somehow.