A New Approach to Friends on Facebook

Mark Cuban’s on to something interesting with Facebook.

With 5,000 FB friends (and counting), Cuban has decided to divide (and conquer?) his FB network into three tiers: real friends, people with whom he has some sort of connection, and people who are interesting because they have influence or power (aka “other”).

I wouldn’t be surprised if FB launches a service soon where you can divide and tier your “friends” into mini-groups. This would let you create different profiles for different groups – e.g. a friends and family profile, a serious business profile and a cool, hip social profile.

While I have nowhere near the number of FB friends as Cuban, I’m already having a bad case of FB Regret because I’ve got family and friends mixed up with business colleagues and people who I don’t know.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have created two FB profiles: Mark Evans (Friends & Family) and Mark Evans (Business). This would have let me communicate and act in two different ways. For friends and family, I would post photos and provide a few updates on what’s happening my personal life, while the business network would be focused on where I work (PlanetEye), the conference I help organize (mesh), etc.

I like Cuban’s new approach, although I’m not sure how he’s going to effectively implement it with some help from FB.

Mashable’s Mark Hopkins has some thoughts about how to make Facebook more useful. It includes a suggestion to: “limit the chaos, and let me organize my contacts by priority, rather than attempting to set up intricate filters to get rid of the incessant chatter and invitations that greet me each time I log in.”

Update: I’ve decided to test Cuban’s new approach by asking him to be my Facebook friend. Here’s hoping I make one of the three tiers! As well, I would disagree with All Facebook’s assertion that the newly-launched Friend Lists is a “killer app”. It’s a step forward but not a knock out punch and I have no clue why everyone is excited.

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