Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric
In general, there are two ways to model human relationships in software. An “asymmetric” model is how Twitter currently works. You can “follow” someone else without them following you back. It’s a one-way relationship that may or may not be mutual.
Facebook, on the other hand, has always used a “symmetric” model, where each time you add someone as a friend they have to add you as a friend as well. This is a two-way relationship, and it is required to have any relationship at all. So as a Facebook user there is always a 1-1 relationship among your friends. Everyone who you have claimed as a friend has also claimed you as a friend.
Andrew Chen recently described one advantage of the Twitter model. It allows 4 types of relationships, while Facebook only allows for two. The two relationships of Facebook are “friend and Not Friend”. The four relationships of Twitter are:
- People who follow you, but you don’t follow back
- People who don’t follow you, but you follow them
- You both follow each other (Friends!)
- Neither of you follow each other
Attention Inequality & the Power of Asymmetry
As Andrew points out, an asymmetric model allows for more types of relationships. I think the benefits go further than that. I think that the asymmetric model better mimics how real attention works…and how it has always worked. Any person using Twitter can have a larger number of followers than followees, effectively giving them more attention than they give. This attention inequality is the foundation of the Twitter service…
Some very interesting observations on the fundamentals of the two most popular social networking software. The limitation that facebook currently has is that users of facebook cannot subscribe or to someone else feed without becoming a "friend" and in the process forcing the other person to subscribe to his feeds. Thats one of the friction points that I as a user have when accepting facebook friend requests. Im OK with letting people subscribe to my feeds, but I do not necessary want to know about them.
Maybe facebook can allow a way for users to subscribe to other peoples feeds without the obligation of becoming a "friend" and achieve Asymmetry which will enable them to grow as rapidly as twitter.
