Outsmarting The Great Facebook

I typically have two tabs open on my FireFox when I'm browsing the Internet. The first is my Gmail, because I am very adept at keeping up with correspondences, and who doesn't enjoy procrastinating once in a while. The second tab is Facebook, in my opinion, the king of social networking.

Facebook is a tremendous site and it continues to get better and better. It constanly adds new features; most recent is the instant messenging (IMing) that you can do with all of your Facebook friends when they are online at the same time as you. That's just brilliant. It brings you to the site, and keeps you there. This has got to make advertisers very very happy. They've also had their fair share of problems with the addition of new features. Who can forget when Facebook added their controversial News Feed.

This feature addition provoked an uproar by the Facebook community and even elicited a public apology by Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and creator of Facebook. However, for the most part, I would say Facebook keeps their users happy and content. I continue to use their service everyday (multiple times a day), because it's the best means of keeping in touch with people and also now with the addition of applications, video, pictures, etc., the best means of representing something about you to the world and the people you know. Your Facebook can say a lot about you, beware.

I, like a lot of people probably, also like to think about how to improve and use Facebook better. What can Facebook do to make my life that much easier? The funny thing is that every time I think something up that would make Facebook better, I login the next day and see that they've already done what I was just thinking about.

This actually just happened to a friend of mine. He was thinking about a new way to transmit news, where the Internet gives the power back to the people and takes it away from the large media giants like BBC, CNN, etc.

But, just as he dreamed it up, he checked through the Internet for a little and came across, iReport, which is published by CNN and was essentially his idea already formed.

This doesn't discredit my friend's idea though; it is impressive that he was able to think something up ahead of time that CNN has gone through the trouble to develop and put in place.

That being said, this time I'm going to be one step ahead of the Great Facebook. It is no joke, they are great, and they have an army of 70 million to prove it. I think that there is one critical feature that they are lacking that would make the service that much more desirable to users (or perhaps just me), and to Facebook as well.

We have to understand one thing first, though. Facebook is a business. They are doing very well. Facebook is in the business of Marketing and Advertising.

Facebook does not have any reason to change anything on its website at the moment if it doesn't further their business; they are doing fine enough as it is. So, if there is upside from a Marketing or Advertising perspective, then Facebook should add a new feature, but not before.

Quite simply, Facebook should add a "RANDOM FRIEND," link somewhere on their page. When a user clicks the "Random Friend," button it takes them to a random profile page of one of their Facebook friends. The location of this new feature doesn't really matter. It could be on the left panel below the "Applications," or across the top bar by the "home," "account," "privacy," and "logout" hyperlinks.

I don't care where they put it really, but they need to add it, and the sooner the better. If you want a prototype of this idea, I suggest checking out the "Random Article," link on Wikipedia.

• First, I'll explain why this is an awesome and necessary feature, and second I'll explain why Facebook should do it to help their business.

The "Random Friend," link is a really helpful tool to Facebook users, because it makes their browsing less active and so much more passive. By the simple click of a button, one can be whisked off to a new Facebook friend's profile without even having to think about it. There are several ways that I find my friends today on Facebook that, in my opinion, take far more work than the simple, "Random Friend," button. I can:

1. See a NAME or PICTURE on the News Feed
2. See who's STATUS has been updated
3. See who is CURRENTLY ONLINE
4. See which friends have RECENTLY UPDATED
5. Click on friends who have written on my WALL
6. Click on friends who have commented on my PICTURES

These are all excellent ways of finding your friends and visiting their profiles. However, I'm often pleasantly surprised when I see someone's name pop-up on my News Feed who I haven't spoken to in a while.

I visit their profile, look at their pictures, then usually write them a message or post on their wall. This helps me keep in touch with them which is, or should be, the primary function of Facebook. I feel like it is easy to fall into a loop of seeing the same people's profile over and over. In that sense, Facebook is making our world smaller, rather than enlarging it as it could.

By having the "Random Friend," link, I will be better able to stay in touch with my friends, because I may more frequently, or at least once in a while stumble upon their profile.

I think that this is also a necessary feature for Facebook to add, because it has gotten to such a size where certain members have accumulated 200, 500, or even 1000 or more friends on Facebook. According to Buzz Canuck, a blog on viral communication, the mean number of Facebook friends a person has is 164.

At such a size, it becomes hard to track all of those people. When discussing social networks, people will often cite the Dunbar Number, which explains the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships: the kind of relationships that go with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person."

That number isn't exactly known but it is often referenced at 150. That means that beyond 150 people, based on evolutionary psychology, anthropological findings, and sociological studies (not to mention a reference in The Tipping Point), human beings have trouble maintaining stable social relationships.

The beauty of Facebook, I believe, is that it can make this Dunbar Number larger. However, we are wired in such a way currently to have this 150 capacity. Facebook can help us develop our own social skills by broadening our horizons, rather than trapping us in the same social loop.

Facebook would also want to add this feature to help their own business. There are two things that advertisers are looking for when they decide to publish an advertisement on a web page. One of the first things they look for is, how long people stay on that web page. This is critical, because it indicates how much exposure the advertiser is getting and how much time their advertisement is likely to be seen.

Facebook has done this tremendously well with their newest IMing feature. People are going to stay on Facebook for obscene amounts of time now, because they can chat with their Facebook friends easily. That will keep people at their computers.

The second thing that advertisers look for when publishing on a web page is the amount of impressions or visits a page has. This is important, because it suggests how many people your advertisement will be exposed to and how frequently that will occur. This second concept is improved by the "Random Friend," link.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**
Now, I realize that Facebook's advertisements, usually on the vertical ones on the left hand side below the "Applications" section refreshes every time you go to a new page.

What I'm more interested in, however, is how many pages I and the rest of Facebook users go to on a regular visit to the site. This will impact overall page views for the entire website.

What is interesting to note is that even with all of these incredible new applications and new features that have been put on Facebook, according to Alexa.com, a web information company, in the past 3 months the number of unique pages viewed per user per day for Facebook has declined 20%. Facebook still receives an obscene amount of unique pages viewed per user per day, around 20, but Facebook is a business, and if a component of their advertising allure (page views) declines by 20% in a quarter, no one is going to be happy.

Quite simply, Facebook needs to add a "Random Friend," link in order to maintain and potentially improve their very successful site.