One of the interesting problems with Facebook is the way it filters your friends feed.

[randomness]

We had a conversation last night during which one of my friends (PQ) complained that no one in Boston seemed to have seen her post that she was flying in from the Netherlands. Another friend in the conversation (BB) reported that only about a tenth of PQ's posts were showing up on her feed, and that when BB went back to look at PQ's personal page she saw all these posts that she had never seen before.

Later, it occurred to me that this might be a function of the number of people one has friended on Facebook. I have all of 34 friends on the Facebook account corresponding to my name here, and I fairly reliably see most of what they post, although there are occasional dropped posts. It does help when I use the "most recent" option, but I still don't know if that gets them all.

Facebook's algorithm for showing posts on one's feed is obscure but it does seem to try to reduce the number of posts one gets to what they consider a manageable number. Evidently they have decided that simply forwarding all the posts one's friends have written is overwhelming for people with many friends. Overwhelming the advertisements, no doubt.

In any case, if I needed any more reasons to stick with LJ/dw as my primary platform, this is yet another.

Comments

[gosling.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why I intensely dislike Facebook. I read it, because seeing at least some of what my friends post there is better than seeing nothing of what my friends post there. I don't post there, however, and I know from experience that I will miss all kinds things I wish I had seen.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Having only 34 people friended does reduce the proportion of misses significantly. It's few enough people that I can occasionally do a sweep through the timelines of people I know just to check if anything's slipped through the cracks.

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

I've found that ruthlessly hiding people that I'm not particularly interested in generally means I see more things from people I am interested in. Or at least I have that illusion because the ratio of interesting to not interesting is better.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Agreed. My version of ruthlessly hiding people is only friending people who I know who have found that account.

It possibly doesn't hurt that my profile says I'm 21 and female, which also has the side-benefit of being interesting in all kinds of other ways.

[persis.livejournal.com]

I have similar feelings, but every time I am just fed up with fb picking whose posts I should be seeing, I get comments from people I have not heard from in months. For me, it is quicker to post pictures and quick posts from the road... but there are a few quirks that I have only today started noticing that are annoying, not the least being not seeing posts from ALL my friends.However, I think I need to do more posting here on LJ/dw as well. BTW, I also noticed that I am not seeing PQ's posts, and I used to see them all...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I actually saw a post of hers saying she was flying in to Boston, but that was from Chicago, so I suspect I missed something about her coming in from the Netherlands. I wonder if it has something to do with her being in a different country.

One of the things I've been doing about people I haven't been seeing in months is to send them email on their birthday. Fortunately, LJ reminds me of their birthdays. Many people don't actually answer (I'm guessing it's spam filters because my email host is something of a spam host) but many others do, which is nice. And it's a lot more personal than Facebook.

It would probably be better if I had more people's birthday's in my calendar.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Oh, also my road posting hardware is my netbook, so there's much less of a difference for me between posting from the road and posting from home. I actually rather like it that way.

So, speaking of catching up, we should. :)

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

I think filters make a good metaphor for the ways the economy of ideas is changing. The old model of filters (newspapers, TV networks, publishing houses, record companies) was overwhelmed by a wave of cheap information on the internet and totally undermined. A new set of filters is trying to come into being. Gmail filters my emails. Facebook filters communications with my friends. Hulu and Netflix are vying to become filters for TV. My problem with all of these is that I have so little control over what they give to me and less over what they take from me. They seem to be deliberately obscure. This new model really bothers me, especially as the traditional editing and nurturing of new talent performed by the old economy does not yet seem to have found a model in the new economy.

In other words, I miss editors who were clearly editors.

[nathanjw]

It's an interesting problem, as annoying as the implementation currently is, but I don't think they're wrong to be heading in this direction. Here's why: Even assuming that right now I can keep up with all of the posts from all of my friends, at some point that will not be true - too much will be posted, or I'll have less time to read, or I'll go away for a while. What's the right thing to show me, in that case?

1. The full feed, but only the most recent things as far back as I have patience to read (what LJ, or any other naive new-posts-at-the-top system does). This causes me to see certain consecutive stretches of posts but miss some other consecutive stretches of posts, somewhat randomly chosen as it's based on exactly what moments I happen to look at things, and not based on the posts themselves.

2. The full feed, from when I last read, as far forward as I have patience to read (what most email clients do). I fall further and further behind, most likely, and eventually declare "bankruptcy" and miss some large consecutive set of posts and start over.

3. "The important stuff". This could be a lot better than 1 or 2, because there are lots of signals present that could tell the system what's important to me - people commenting a lot on a post, friends of mine in particular commenting on a post, posts by people I've interacted with more in the past, and so on. I think that's what Facebook is currently approximating, and I expect it to get better. The knob that I want here is one to expand the quantity of posts that it's willing to show me - basically, the quality/importance threshold - and perhaps a way to make it clear where (in the timeline?) there are buried posts that are currently below the threshold, in case I do have the time to dig into them.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

What's the right thing to show me, in that case?

In general, the thing I want my social network to do is to let me decide.

and perhaps a way to make it clear where (in the timeline?) there are buried posts that are currently below the threshold, in case I do have the time to dig into them.

This is key, at least for me. When something like that exists I can catch what I consider to be errors in the algorithm's behavior.

I would also prefer having the option of 2. If I declare "bankruptcy", that's my decision, not the algorithm's.

I think what I really want is the ability to tweak my feed in a very granular way, with the help of algorithms which are transparent and under my control. However, allowing users that level of control probably conflicts with some objectives Facebook has. To take one obvious example, many people would probably want to opt out of advertisements entirely.

On the other hand (just thinking aloud here) for the right price I would pay for access to transparent algorithms and control over my feed. So there's a possible revenue stream. I have a paid account on LJ, for example, even though the only use I make of it is the email forwarding and the polls. If Facebook charged me something on the order of what LJ charges me, and gives me control over what shows up in my feed, I might well pay them.

I don't know if that's a viable model for Facebook, though.

[nathanjw]

Knobs for users are hard to implement . I don't have to assume malign intent or conflicting objectives to understand why they don't exist. Ask instead: out of my 1, 2, or 3, what should they implement for the user - most of their users - who is never going to turn a knob?

(This all might be far too charitable, but I now live on their side of implementing stuff for lots of users, so I have sympathy).

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Sure. I can understand why one wouldn't build knobs for general users.

But do users who have paid for knobs use them? If you can get users to pay for some knobs, those might be worth adding.

I now live on their side of implementing stuff for lots of users, so I have sympathy

That's fair. I've lived on the side of implementing stuff for customers when they're willing to pay for them. Generally the cost is too high for most users to fund features, but not always.

The other thing that strikes me about Facebook is that it tends to create knobs for people posting, as opposed to ones for people reading. For example, Facebook includes a way for posters to boost visibility of their posts.

That last is what tends to make me think there may be conflicting objectives.