Quite the opposite, in my opinion. People don't like being bothered by strangers on Facebook. It's weird and creepy, especially so when it's a guy contacting a girl. This could be seen as a disincentive to share if you don't want your face popping up on search results for people outside your immediate network.

It also makes friends who are ignorant or careless about privacy more of a liability. If they tag you in something that's set to 'public', that thing could now be seen by far more strangers far more frequently. There's no good solution to this: You can harrass your friends about their tagging habits, waste countless hours un-tagging yourself every month, or delete your profile altogether.

I could see it being useful if you could give it commands. Something like: "Invite all friends who like Game of Thrones to my Game of Thrones Event on Sunday at 8PM". Then again, that could just increase the amount of noise on Facebook and drive people away even faster.

People love being bothered by strangers. Just try it. Make any half-funny observation about the world around you to a random stranger in the line, at the hairdresser... just not when they're actively doing something. Weather the surprise, repeat what you said if necessary, allow them to come up with a response. If they don't, follow through yourself.

At first it seems like you're a crazy person talking at others. But after a minute (though it'll feel like a little longer) most people will happily talk to you.

And don't think of it as "bothering". You're diverting your precious attention to them. The thing that every website and channel on the planet wants from you.

That used to be just normal, polite behaviour BTW.

You know? The ones who want to talk to you in elevators? Or just come and stand next your desk while you're trying to do work and talk? All socionormative, smile and handshake?

Maybe you should watch this: http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts....

Here's a thing: If I dont know you, and you want a conversation, catch my eye. If I smile, sure, lets chat.

If I look away, look at my phone, stare out the window.

dont talk to me

Your social obligation to engage is unwelcome

In all seriousness; you need to re-evaluate if you honestly believe "People love being bothered by strangers."

Some people may; many do not. You enjoy bothering strangers. There's a difference.

I really hope this "introvert fad" slows down soon. There's no need to be so radical, there's a spectrum of personality types. It's not black and white. I identify as an introvert. Social situations exhaust me, so I enjoy them sparingly.

If someone makes a funny comment to me in the elevator, I'll laugh and it's okay. I don't rant to him about my being a recluse.

So, for Facebook it doesn't matter. As they always do, first they create something that is seen as violating people's notion of privacy. Then they add some form of setting that allows the introverts and control-freaks like you and me that makes it enough for us to not abandon the site, but at the same time allows to still be users.

Also, there is something funny about how you mention not liking to be bothered by strangers in an Internet forum with 10^6 users, but I digress.

One fourth to a less than a half is not "vastly outnumbered".

PS Or even slightly more than a half: http://www.thoughtful-self-improvement.com/percentage-of-int...

Here's the cliff notes: “But in 1998, researchers were finally able to do what Isabel Briggs Myers could not: an actual population study. The study was based on a national representative sample – 3,009 randomly selected individuals – which, through weighting of underrepresented groups, was made to approximate the distribution of the 1990 U.S. Census. The findings were clear: introverts and extroverts are equally represented in the population.” (emphasis in original)

Yes - but if you watch very carefully you'll notice their eyes darting nervously about, trying to find the nearest exit, and a small frown appear as they attempt to calculate the whether staying in the line is worth it, and the likelihood of you attempting to sell them something or attempt violence if you make your excuses.

In other words - if some random guy starts talking to you in a line, you will tend to make small-talk in return. Whether you like it or not.

That's always nice, for everyone involved (or so I like to think).

.... Wait for it :)

Edit: I'll take your downvotes, but know that there's a joke there you're just not getting.

- the interaction is of a short, definite length. I will probably never see you again if I don't want to.

- the number of real-life encounters I can have in a day are limited by my location in space and time. it's fun to have that happen once a day; I imagine the joy wears off when it's happening 30 times.

Doesn't talk about FB, as it wasn't yet a dominant force yet.

You can also change your profile settings so you have to approve all posts you are tagged in before the tag can be viewed by the public. I've found this to work a lot better for me than untagging

Revisiting it just now, the options in that section of Privacy are now fairly byzantine, but I think I still have it locked down :-)

This is true, however the fact that you can search friends of friends means you can look for people you might want to get to know better, and get introduced via your mutual friend. Or be bold and just send them a friend request with a little note, etc.

A friend of a friend is less of a random person than the current facebook search which is actually random.

Obviously it will be abused by some, however I think it is a pretty big deal as a feature

Plus there was anybeat.com - which got shut down http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/09/anonymous-social-network-an...

How is this any different to just creating an event normally ?

But it's okay, you'll get the last laugh in another few decades when having a Facebook profile is more powerful than having government issued identification and we're in a topsy turvy world where if the Facebook personality emitting/detecting jewel you have to wear around your neck would light up if someone else compatible is close by for you to mate with.

At least you didn't contribute that to society.

Source:)?

I get the "hook" to lure people onto facebook may change from generation to generation but I wouldn't necessarily say the hook for a newer generation supersedes the needs of the existing generations. If that were the case, facebook would always be focued on building a product for 16-18 year olds. Clearly that hasn't been the case from their past history.

To that extent, this is a pretty big thing for them to pull off. I could certainly see it helping their growth if you are finally able to search for people in a more fine-grained way and connect with them.

Some say this may be unwanted -- that's exactly why FB has been testing having people pay to send messages. They know this will be a problem and are searching for solutions.

myself and around me, people (early 30ies now) all use FB primarily to "stay in touch" with people that are not really close anymore. old colleagues from school, uni, whatever. co-workers? not so much, for that you have linkedin.

so:

1., who exactly should i want to meet out of these people's connections?

2., as no one is using the like button, what exactly is it supposed to data mine?

3., why would i go to FB to search, if my browser automatically searches in google if i start typing in the URL bar? or the search box on iOS.

social search? i want to know which restaurants are recommended by people with taste, not my friends. movie recommendations? i prefer ebert over the people i know.

crowdsourcing is mob rule.

That said, fb has never made sense to me except through the lens of millennial and boomer narcissism. Maybe they'll lap it up. (I am not intentionally exempting our generation but I've never quite gotten the same vibe as from those who came before and after us.)

I assume you mean "No one is clicking the like button", but of course they are, and even when you don't click the like button Facebook still knows exactly which page you saw it on, and that gives them plenty of information to mine..

What a myopic view. Lets take myself, and 90% of the people I know - as real friends. They are all in relationships.

You know what could be "Huge" - creating ad-hoc groups around interests.

Imagine searching for people around you, within a definable degree of separation, that have the same interests where you can do activities.

Meeting people yes - dating does NOT have to be the singular vector for such relationships, that will be a natural secondary. And as a secondary - remains less creepy.

This really seems to harken back to facebook circa 2004. Every single comma separated phrase in interests section of your profile was a link that brought up all the other profiles with that phrase in your college network. I suppose some folks discovered each other this way, but it didn't seem very popular. No one cared when facebook disabled it.

This is also the obvious next step for social networks and one that quite a few startups (including ourselves) have been working on for the past couple of years under the "people discovery" banner. Can't wait to see this in action.

It's time for online dating to die. I've had enough of my little sister calling me up with horror stories, like the time a guy's first message was "what's the largest you've taken." No joke.

A world where online dating takes place on Facebook (or Ark) will be a better place.

This is facebook's core value prop though. To flip is would be fundamentally flip what facebook's good at - creating a deeper digital connection with ppl you meet in real life.

Meeting ppl on facebook became weird and creepy when they became too open. It wasn't an issue so much when they were closed to college networks. They sacrificed privacy for growth.

On the flipside, consider LinkedIn, where it's not considered creepy to reach out to a complete stranger (recruiters do it all the time). But b/c LinkedIn has a focus (careers) and has more privacy, this is acceptable in their ecosystem.

Net net, I think the only way facebook can be about meeting new ppl and do it well is if they sacrifice openness. Otherwise the creepy factor will undermine success.

For many people, it's creepy to "search out" and find you. Making an initial contact on the internet is a far bigger hurdle in a tight social network like facebook than it is in real life.

For myself, Facebook Groups have actually already done a great deal to put me in a setting with a bunch of new people that I can relate to... and I have made friends that way. From group projects, to school groups, to interest groups. You get to know each other surprisingly well.

Search requires initiative. Initiative is very uncool.

Actually one of the examples shown today was a dating example, one of the Facebook managers who oversaw the product trying to set his wife's cousin up with someone: "friends of people I'm friends with who live in San Francisco and are from India"

http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+%22graph+search%22+%...

I'm trying to work out if this is a good idea or not. Do privacy settings still apply when you join a group?

Would people just message any stranger? I guess thats not the norm now.

If they want to, doesn't it cost $1 now? Maybe that's the whole idea...