Social product design closer to reality

First, let's review a few scenarios.

The time is 2009, User A is a sophomore student, he uses Renren to communicate with former classmates and friends. But recently he encountered a problem, the thing is this: a group of very good brothers, nothing to talk about Cang teacher, scold curse, tell jokes and so on. This way of communication makes a feel real and enjoyable. But at the same time, A's renren friends and some of the students in the school now, some of them are girls, there are goddesses. A does not want to show their "bad" side to them. However, in all of the network hair status, will be pushed to all friends, no way to set permissions, no way to encrypt. For the goddesses, a had to conduct self-censorship and try not to send "sensitive information", but at the cost of his being with his good brothers.

Time is 2010, User B is a Beijing advertising company's designer, usually like to play Weibo. For him, Weibo has two functions, one is to communicate with friends, the other is to operate his personal brand, and sometimes through micro-blog to receive some Sihuo. But more recently, he has become more cautious about his microblog because he found his boss focused on him. Ordinary work on some complaints, spit the boss, scold customers Weibo, he is afraid to hair, but without these, life is lack of how much fun ah! He wants to sign up for a new account, but it's a bit reluctant to save more than 2000 fans over the years. To think about it, he had to register a "B-private" microblogging account, his friends follow again. But two accounts poured down to use is very confusing, such as last time he accidentally complained that the boss of the microblog with the original account sent out, although promptly deleted, but still scared out a cold sweat.

What is the difference between how we use online social tools and how we socialize in real life? Why is it so obvious that there are no obvious, even non-existent problems in the real world, online social tools? To figure this out, perhaps we should first look at what our social networking model is like in the real world.

User C, a product manager who works for a reputable internet company in Shenzhen, recalls that he has communicated with the following people in the past one months:

--In the working day, with the company's colleagues to discuss the needs and design, concluded: the development of a reminder function, in the user's account balance less than xx yuan when the way to remind users of tips, if the user registered mobile phone number, you can also use SMS reminders. Reference

-Night off, someone in QQ "close friends Group" in the message that the C University of love goddess X2 weeks to get married. Close friends in the group full of gossip once again the story of the C chasing Goddess, C also enjoy. Finally they decided to go to Shanghai to attend the goddess's wedding. Article

--Call the property and have them send someone to the house to repair the hose. (3)

--Call their parents to tell them to go home on national Day, and call the seven Aunt eight to ask them if they want to take cosmetics from Hong Kong. (4)

-Weekend, with your girlfriend to see a movie, by the way a cup of coffee. (5)

Draw the network diagram, plus C himself, is the following:

From the above picture, we can find some obvious features:

In real life, C's all social objects are not mixed together, but formed a natural circle.

There is no intersection between the different circles, or the intersection is very little (only one, that is, one of the university students are also his current colleagues).

Originally, in real life, C's social network in addition to the person's structure, there is another important structure, is "circle." Generally, an individual plays a different role in a different circle, and a particular topic is often shared within one circle without affecting another, while the members of different circles are often socially isolated, not known to each other or less aware.

On the web, this is the way (if everyone in the world uses the same social tool):

Most of the social products on the traditional internet are made up of human-minimal units. The network is a direct connection between people, and there is no other level two structure on top of the web. For a user, his "friend" is flat, there is no hierarchy, there is no distinction between closeness and proximity.

Such a network structure means that any UGC generated by any user will be pushed to all his friends because there is no "buddy rating system". If you translate user C into the online structure in real life, there are a variety of problems:

Therefore, the root of the problem seems to be that the traditional online social products, not very good to achieve real life "circle" structure and function.

In recent years, more and more social products have become aware of this problem and are beginning to think and solve it. For example:

1, the introduction of a similar circle of structure.

Micro-credit circle, in the photo, there is a "visible range" option, in the future, you can group all the micro-trust friends, and then you can push UGC only to specific groups of members.

There is also a small problem, that is, if I have a lot of circles, each time such a choice, how much trouble ah. In fact, we think carefully, we will find that many times we do not need to UGC the visible range of such a fine, many times, we only need to have some particularly sensitive people out of the way (such as the boss), so the circle of friends also provides a blacklist function, A blacklist can also be seen as a special circle. In addition, there will always be some people, you do not like, but due to face, or business contacts and so on, you have to keep in touch with him. Such a person, you will not care about what he ate at noon, the family dog pulled a few excrement and so on. This is actually "circle":

2, vertical subdivision SNS, automatic formation of the circle

Linkedin, and some of the "workplace Social networking sites" in the country. Defining its attributes as a communication tool between the workplace and the peer, the hunting class, makes LinkedIn a natural form of a closed circle. People on LinkedIn generally do not talk about gossip, not send a child full moon photos, but show resumes, expand Contacts. All UGC are created to serve these tasks, and you naturally don't have to tangle to send out the message of the boss.

3. On the closeness and proximity of social relations

In all your social relationships, there will be a certain number of people who are particularly intimate with you, such as girlfriends, girlfriends, confidante, etc. And the other part of the people, may be just ordinary friends, such as some colleagues, some college students and so on. Therefore, in real society, the real Circle division, the dimension is not unique. Circles are more like labels on all social objects than physical structures. So a lot of times, the circle can not be calculated according to the simple algorithm, at least for now there's no way to be particularly precise (or, as it is, not enough market prospects to support us to make it very precise), but the products that are supported by imprecise algorithms are bound to have a variety of problems, such as, maybe someday, Your ex-girlfriend will appear in your current girlfriend's "someone you might know."

However, imprecise also has the imprecise play. There is a relationship that is relatively easy to deal with, that is, "temporary relationship". For example, the C mentioned above to ask the property personnel to repair the water pipe, then he will be with the maintenance staff to establish a temporary relationship, once the water pipe is repaired, perhaps they will not have any social life. This kind of temporary relationship is also reflected in online social products.

For example, in some games of QQ, you can add the person who plays the game together as "game friend". This is more like a restricted temporary relationship. Game friends can not see each other's QQ signature, Qzone inside the photos, they only have contact in the game, and form a specific circle.

References: "The real life SOCIAL receptacle" http://www.slideshare.net/padday

This article address: http://uxcafe.org/blog/2013/11/689

Author Weibo: Http://weibo.com/xidea

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