Facebook Tools

- Groups

A characteristic of being a member of a community is the feeling of belonging, to be part of a greater whole. In Facebook this is created by the use of groups. People can join many groups who they feel they should, or can, be part of. These can be situated around education, work, interests, groups of friends, travels etc... Each of these groups have their own 'wall' and small forum where members can post and talk to each other.

My personal experience is that this function is underused. It started my first research question about "why do people leave/join these groups so fast". From what I've seen most of the groups function as tags which are visible in the users profile. These groups can be joined and left again very fast and the amount of actual interaction going on there is minimal.

It shows that a lot of the interaction, besides checking profiles and sending short messages, still happens offline.

- Events

People can organize events and use their friends list to create invites. These events are based on real-life events. They are a link between the online world and it's network capabilities and the offline strengthening of bounds through interactions. The event site will feature a list of people attending or not, giving more information to possible participants.

- Photos / videos

Each user can upload pictures and videos to his or her profile. These can then be tagged, which creates a link to the profile of those persons in the picture. By notifications the persons will be notified of it and the pictures will show up on their profile. There is no more need to go harvesting pictures from other people's computer (if you're happy enough with the lower quality and size). Compromising pictures can be untagged by the person who's in the picture.

- Notes

Notes function as a blog option. People can write in their notes and publish them so other people can read them. It shares the basic functionality of a blog.

- Poke

Users can poke each other. Basically it's a way to say 'hi' and let them know you're thinking of them. You can relate this to giving a miscall using mobile phones: in certain cultures it means the same as the poke.

- Private messaging

Users can send each other private messages which will appear in the recipients profile's inbox. It shares the same functionality as email, except that it actively links the profile of the sender to the message.