I predict that his prediction is wrong. Facebook already has an asymmetric relationship for "pages". I instead suspect that they may add "fans" for regular people. Changing the semantics of the default "friends" relationship has serious implications on their very carefully crafted (and highly effective!) privacy controls. This is a much smaller change that still yields the four possible relationships and maps more directly to their current privacy model.
While the title of the post seems to indicate a prediction for change in the default relationship semantics, the author does suggest that Facebook will probably maintain both models.
I don't buy it. On twitter, you use a handle and your page is just your tweet history. Facebook is way more personal - asymmetric relationships would lead to hurt feelings.
But on facebook I can't be friends with Britney, or Obama, or Hughesy, or any other celbrity. on Twitter I Can (at least - I can see what they're doing.. even if they don't see me)
While I don't see that as valuable for me - some users (and I'd guess a lot of facebook users) - see that as pretty awesome.
Also - the link title is misleading - the article suggests Friend/Fan (or Friend/Follow) will co-exist.
Well, that's what Twitter is for. But Facebook is a different type of site. It's not a site for being "friends" with Shaq (or Britney/Obama/whoever if you prefer).
I mean, I can do my taxes on H&R Block's site, and that's kind of awesome (well, as awesome as doing taxes gets). But that doesn't mean Facebook should help me with my taxes.
People need to grow up. Real world relationships are nothing like forced symmetry. It's the wrong model for a large application.
So you're saying Facebook should not worry about pleasing its users, but model the real world and tell its users to "grow up" if they don't like it? That doesn't seem like a growth strategy.
Have you tracked Facebook's changes? They routinely piss off vocal users to make their service better. It's a growth strategy. They doubled in size in 8 months - which for an app that big is ridiculous growth.
They are certainly making a bet about the real time web with their most recent changes.
The change to make relationships more asymmetric is a requirement to get bigger.
There's a difference between upsetting a few vocal users to improve the service and making the service worse overall simply in order to model the real world more accurately.
The real world has 6 billion users. It works really well.
Many people have noted that explicitly declaring who your friends are in Facebook is really quite awkward when applied beyond your, yah konw, friends. Coworkers, for example, make this really awkward.
So my point isn't that they should reflect the real world arbitrarily. My point is that they should do it because it is better.
You think it's better...because it would decrease awkwardness? I'm not sure I follow. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you...but I think it would increase awkwardness.
I friend everyone that requests it, and block many people from my news feed. That has made Facebook just like FriendFeed and Twitter and Tumblr for me - just a different social graph.
