Experiencing that recurrent pain of social networks..
Have you ever wanted to share something with a certain group of people you know??
Well, it seems, since my travels around Peru, in 2005, I’ve yet to find a perfect solution for this dilemma… Back then, I was travelling around Peru, and wanted to share some of the more personal stories, with select groups of family and friends, whilst the more general updates were meant for everyone.. But it seems, that there wasn’t an easy solution to the challenge, and so I ended up just not sharing some of the more intimate and personal stories, of my adventures, with the ones I wanted to share my stories with. 3 years on, and we don’t appear to be much closer to solving that challenge.. I suppose if I was only staying in touch with 4 or 5 people, this wouldn’t be a problem.. But being an active member in a number of different communities, and wanting to share stories, pictures and adventures with friends and family, being able to choose who gets to see what, seems to be a complex challenge, with no real practical solution.
I tried using Facebook recently, to share photos from my wedding, with some of the more personal, family moments, to be shared just with close immediate family, and it seems that Facebooks privacy settings, are far from perfect… Short of excluding everyone, and then only including certain family members, you can’t just choose who to share photos with..
This challenge is one I’ve been grappling with for more than 3 years, and whilst I know the solution lies in starting with the social graph, and then managing access to information based on the relationships between people, it seems there’s very few if any services, that truly are able to execute this infrastructure, based on the needs of the person, with a real community in real life. Facebook is trying as hard as it can, but being event driven, and advertising focussed, it can only ever truly be a glorified advertising platform, that lets people see what is happening in the most coarsest, and heavy handed manner. For online tools to be able to come close to allowing the average person, with a multi-faceted life, to safely share the content that matters, with the people that matter to them, and to be able to keep work, family, and personal lives seperate, as we have them in our daily lives, in real life, will require a different order of thinking. Something which Billioninayear.com has managed to do. Once we have our development budget in place, then we’ll be able to see in a more direct manner, just how a tool, designed to keep you connected to the people you want to stay connected with, can really be a blessing, and save time, instead of becoming a curse, and adding to the information stream you have to stay on top of.
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