Facebook SmartLists
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/facebooks-smart-lists-real-friends-again/
This article talks about the recent new additional features that Facebook has implemented on their site. It is mainly about the new Smart List feature how that is the “most important change to the service since the platform.” I picked this article because I wanted to use this article and understand and explain it through the lens of Graph theory.
By using the concepts of Graph theory we can better understand why Facebook implemented these new features. Facebook started with it being only exclusive to college students. People were required to have a .edu email to be able to register on Facebook. This didn’t only created an exclusive networking place, but because of this common interest of being in the “college scene” most of the relationships had a strong triadic closure. This is because they had a lot of things in common(and people tend to be friends with people they have common interest with). Another reason why the relationships were strong was because “The service’s defining feature was real identity: real names, real pictures, real friends.” This realness made people want to invest their life more to it.
But after opening it to the public, Facebook wasn’t in a niche anymore. The quantity over quality of friends/relationships was unintentionally stressed. People started adding friends that they only know a little bit. This created a lot of weak edges in the graph. So the news feed(the thing that makes social networking interesting) would not be as interesting since everything your friend posts will show up(even people you don’t know that well).
This is where Facebook’s new feature of Smart List come in. The smart list basically creates an automatic list using certain criteria like school, work, company, location, etc. This is very helpful because sometimes a person is a bridge to many strong triadic closures. Have groups like this you will be able to send specific news feed to specific groups(and also not send any to the rest of your friends you do not know too well).
So why is this so important? Well, graph represent a node having a lot of well-connected groups of relationships but those groups aren’t interconnected the node represents how people have many sides in their social life. So by segmenting the news feed into specific ideas/thoughts that specifically targets a group, the group’s news feed would become more interesting to them(because they know what you are talking about) and vice versa(if they also segment it). Making the news feed more interesting is very important to a social networking site because it only works when people are invested in it. Because more relatable and interesting things are on peoples news feed, people would invest more time in it.
By having people invest more time, we create a positive feedback loop. The more people use it their relationships would tend to become stronger too(because communication is an important part in friendship 🙂 ). Making the strong edges even stronger.