Why Facebook is Failing Me

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook as much as the next guy, but lately I can’t help but feel like it’s not living up to my needs. The problem? I want to use Facebook both professionally and personally. I want my one Facebook account to serve both my “real life” friends and those who have requested my friendship for the sole purpose of getting tech news.

Our Personal & Professional Lives Don’t Always Mix

These are two completely different sets of people. The one group wants to hear the latest information about Web 2.0 and new startups and the other group wants to know how Sophie is doing or what my weekend plans are.

Now, I don’t mind if my “tech” friends hear a little personal information about me but I can guarantee you that some of my real life friends do not care one bit about the tech information. In fact, my own husband said he might have to put me on his “show less of this person” list because my (Twitter-synchronized) updates were way too geeky for him. That, my friends, is a big Facebook fail.

I Hate My Options

I’ve been thinking about what options I have for dealing with this issue, but none seem satisfactory. On the one hand, I can return to using Facebook solely for personal connections, clearing out all the people who I don’t really know and only updating my profile with personal information. I hate this idea.

For one thing, although there are plenty of people I’ve “friended” who I’ve never met face-to-face, I feel like we sort of know each other from online posts, Twitter, and, in some cases, phone conversations. These people, in fact, include my work colleagues at ReadWriteWeb, none of whom I’ve ever met in real life. So obviously, I don’t want to unilaterally unfriend people just because we’ve never met in the real world. I want just want to keep some of my work information away from my personal friends and some of my personal information away from my work friends. Other information – like perhaps the fact that I would be heading to a conference – should be OK for everyone to see.

At the time being, though, this isn’t possible. What’s more, I have added Facebook friends who I don’t know, even from other online services. I actually created a list called “Random People/Don’t Know” for this purpose. You may think this is crazy, but often these friend requests have been accompanied by a note reading “love your work on RWW, would like to follow you on Facebook if that’s OK.”

Who am I to say no?

I applied some privacy settings to this list so I don’t get weird phone calls or people showing up at my house (you never know), but I’ve accepted these requests for the most part.

Because Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, blog posts, etc. all pipe into my Facebook News Feed, these “random” people can easily follow my updates across the web, but the problem is – I have to follow theirs too. And, in several cases, I haven’t even met these folks online – not on Twitter, not on FriendFeed, not anywhere.
And please, don’t bother telling me that I can type their names in manually on my “show less of” list because believe me, I know. But that’s a terrible solution. First of all, I shouldn’t have to type in names one-by-one, I should be able to add an entire friend list to the “show less of” customization feature. Or even better, Facebook should allow one-way friendships like Twitter does.

This is Not a “Tech Elite” Problem

Lest you think this problem is only for the tech elite, think again. This problem will affect anyone who wants to use Facebook professionally. Take, for example, a realtor. Let’s say the realtor wants to use Facebook to send out market updates and new home prices to a list of clients and potential home buyers. This would be fine – and not spam – since anyone friending said realtor would likely know what they were getting themselves into, especially if that service was advertised on said realtor’s business card.

But let’s say that the realtor also wanted to reconnect with old high school and college friends. Now those personal connections would have to be subjected to the same sort of professional news that the customers and clients were receiving.

This is a terrible system.

What is Facebook Doing About This?

Yet as Facebook grows to become the number one network in the U.S. – and it already is worldwide -  more people are going to want to use it for professional and business networking purposes. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do so, but Facebook makes it extremely difficult to separate those two parts of your personality.

Professionals end up spamming their friends and those that follow you professionally have to hear personal information, like your latest bout with the sniffles for example. While your friends might want to stop by with some chicken soup, your clients, customers and colleagues don’t necessarily need that sort of insight into your life.

But what’s Facebook doing about these issues? As far as I can tell, nothing.

The end result is that anyone who wants to use Facebook professionally doesn’t get to use it the way most everyone else does and, frankly, I think that’s a bit unfair. I would love to see a News Feed defaulted to one that just features stories from my close friends, but instead I have to see how 20 people changed their profile picture – and not one of them whom I’ve ever met…online or off.

If I want to see my real life friends, I have first create a list of those folks, then I have to click a button on my News Feed to show me just that list. That’s not a very elegant solution. And forget mobile updates! I have to (again) enter in people one by one on a list, just to get my friends’ updates sent to my phone.

What Would You Do?

A lot of people will say that I should not have friended strangers. But how do I respond to their requests then? Should I tell them they have to go sign up for Twitter if they want to follow me?

I don’t like that idea at all but I’m halfway considering it, if only out of sheer jealously of those who get to really enjoy Facebook the way it is intended. The problem is, though, not everyone wants to use Twitter, and, to be honest, I don’t see why they should have to – especially considering how easy it is for them to get my tweets (status updates) via Facebook.

But my poor, real world friends – they’re the ones I feel sorry for…especially when they comment on my status asking what a tweet is! I’m totally spamming them with tech news and I hate it.

Facebook needs to wake up and realize that if they ever want to really be a network for professionals, they need to address these sorts of issues…like yesterday.