Andrew Chen over at
Futuristic Play has written an
interesting blog post about the deeper nuances of social relationships that Facebook is currently incapable expressing. The post points out how inadequate current systems can be.
The point is, most social networks and your e-mail addressbook allow you to list out your friends, but really you need some more dimensions than that to capture the reality of that relationship, including:
* A notion of an "active" friend versus a "stale" friend, which is a time dimension
* Another might be the actual strength of those relationships, because you might be active with someone at work, but not be very good friends with them
* Similarly, friendships need to have some grouping to them, but they can't be exclusive groups - instead, what group someone is might be fluid or encompass multiple definitions
* Yet another subtlety is the professional versus personal distinction, and the social protocols that come into those interactions based on the groupings
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