Losing a Facebook/Orkut/Linkedin friend

21 Dec, 2007

Losing a Facebook/Orkut/Linkedin friend

Posted by: Jure Cuhalev In: Planet Kiberpipa|Planet LiveCD|Rant|usability

Some time ago I read Cory Doctorows editorial about possible ways that your ex-coworkers will kill Facebook; because your colleagues and bosses will want to be friends on Facebook with their employees, and in process invade privacy of things they do in their personal life and would rather keep it private. Instead of denying their friendship request, they will either abandon the platform, or have more secret profiles.

Pondering this situation I quickly realized that some of the people who are my friends from Kiberpipa, are now my colleagues or in two cases, even bosses. This is why I decided to de-friend AndraÅ¾, who is currently leading development at Zemanta and I answer to directly. He was also conveniently sited at the opposite of the kitchen table, with TomaÅ¾ sitting in a middle, and being friend of both, able to monitor what is happening with our online friendship.

We tested the process on Facebook, Linkedin and Orkut, at all the times observing what kind of notification are sent to original actor, person that is being defriended, and mutual friend of both. Screenshots and details follow in the end.

Observations

In short: none of the networks notify the person who you defriended, or any of your mutual friends. The networks also do not present any obvious way to block the person from adding you as a friend again, and it also does not prevent you to add the same person back to your circle of friends.

More detail observation shows a couple of interesting points. Defriending process is very ascetic and does not help you fully express your reasons, as opposed to the process of friending that allows you to specify complex personal relationships. The person is also left with a short notice upon successful operation but is left wondering what exactly happens now. In my case this left me with a sense of panic because of the act of defriending person is something that should be a two-way communication, with me declaring the end of friendship and the other person acknowledging this; even with just an expressive silence. As such current social networkins fail at setting up a rounded online platform that would allow for proper inter-personal relationships.

Adding person again to your network just re-sends the normal invite without any special messages or warnings. It also does not seem that it has any effects on that person sending you a friendship request again.

What I would wish for

Going through this painful process of losing an online social network friend I do have some wishes how to make the experience better for all the parties involved.

I’d like to see ability to send some sort of notification to the person that I am defriending (in an optional matter), maybe even with a custom message. It would also be nice to somehow notify our mutual friends of that, probably the best way would be by the same event notification that lists new friendships in your network.

It would be also nice to have a bit more focus on having a vivid social life with ability to lose friends if you are inactive for long enough time, just like in a real life and this way stimulate and simulate real life.

Screenshots of the process

Facebook

Defriending of a person is somehow hidden. You have to find them through your list of friends and then select Remove friend option.

Notification to me

A short notice on successful disconnect.

Notification to ex-friend

None!

Notification to mutual friend(s)

None!

Linkedin

Linked in also does not make it very obvious how to break connection. You can not do it from the profile page, but have to go to your “address book”, find the connection on that screen and remove it.