5 things that Facebook can do more! Part I

Facebook have acquired Friendfeed, even as I was planning to write 'what FB can do more' as I hinted in my previous post, the last in the series on Social Media Monitoring. The context of my thought was more from the wish-list perspective. Things that come to the mind while using the platform. Things that could increase the usage by me and people who I interact with.

What I am talking are small things that make a difference. Facebook already has a lot of these small functionalities, that make it such a popular SN platform.

Lets begin with the most used feature on Facebook; The Status updates. This is where most of the interesting conversations begin. You would have noted that FB shrinks the whole conversation thread if there are more than 3 comments on a status. This is where the first of the 'Mores' can be created. People often click on View all comments link, opening the conversation thread. Two requirements that originate due to this are:

1. There is no way the user can close the displayed conversation.

2. Users also wish to go back to some interesting conversations, but it is difficult to do so, due to the unending flow of Updates from the friends.

Things that facebook can do, to make the above simple:

1. There can be an Up arrow on the top of the opened conversations, that can shrink-back the opened conversation.

2. There can be a 'bookmark' icon that would bookmark conversations that a user might find interesting.

3. These bookmarked conversations can be viewed on the Users Profile page, where currently Facebook offers the tabs to view updates from Self, Self+friends and Friends only. Adding this tab would definitely improve the usability and the feature can be extended by giving people the option to group bookmarks.

Part II coming up in a few days.