I don't know if you are familiar with the '7 degrees of separation' hypothesis, which basically states that
"any 2 people in the world are separated by at most 7 degrees of separation."
This means that someone in Alaska could well be the friend of the cousin of the friend of the teacher of the pen pal of your sister's friend. In essence, you can connect any two people with such a line.
I don't know how accurate this hypothesis is, but when I think about it it seems pretty plausible to me. I mean, I'm sure it's a pretty common occurrence for Facebook users to go like 'Eh?! You know jane ah? she's from my secondary school!' which just shows the coverage of social networks.
Ok sorry that was a random digression about what I wanted to blog about. This post isn't about this 7 degrees of separation, but for a new feature for Facebook, that is, a 'Circle of Friends' or 'CoF' for short.
The perils of Facebook is well known to Communications and New Media students and basically any individual with common sense. If you upload something onto your Facebook, you must remember that it's very likely your future colleagues, or boss(es) may see it. Even the HR of the company you're applying for may run a Facebook sweep about you. (of course this last one may be protected if the HR are not your friends and you already have your privacy setting up to prevent non-friends from viewing your stuff..) Thus, there's the fear of uploading things that you WANT to upload.
How do we rectify this? Include a 'circles of friends' classification for Facebook!
Think of it as concentric circles, with the innermost circle being your closest circle of friends, the next circle being your close friends, the next circle being your normal friends, the next being your acquaintances, and the next being peopleyoubarelyknowbutwanttofriendyoubecausetheywannaboosttheirfacebookfriendscount. You get the idea.
Then your privacy settings will include how much you want each circle to see. For instance, everytime i upload a photo, I can select 'up to which degree of friends' do i want to allow to see those photos. There can be a default setting that simply 'allows all'.
This may sound troublesome to customize for those who don't care about what others see about them, so it can be an opt-in thing - if you don't want to utilize this feature, the default will just be the way things are now.
This feature can be called 'Circles of Friends' (CoF) and can be activated for various things besides photos - such as wall posts, sharing of links, videos. If you cant be bothered selecting who to allow to view your stuff everytime you perform an activity, it's ok! You just continue with your normal usage. If you ARE bothered, you activate the CoF for whichever function you want (e.g. wall posts) and everytime you make a wall post you select from a dropdown menu to which level you want to allow viewership of it, etc.
Oh, and of course your CoF settings for respective friends will be kept confidential, so your friends' feelings aren't hurt :p It can be a chore to get it up and running especially if you have like 12837 friends, but think of the benefits!
No more worrying about broadcasting personal (as in 'private', not personal as in yours) thoughts to seemingly any tom dick and harry on your FB list! No more worrying about your parents seeing your wild party photos! No more worrying about your colleagues finding out about your double life!
EDIT: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2032030,00.html
Even more privacy issues with the 'See Friendship' feature allowing friends of friends to see your private photos! This can potentially bypass the CoF thing as well, so I think the See Friendship feature needs fixing eh. :@
