How to wean users add to friends when you just need to subscribe
One of Facebook’s problems is the flow of friend additions from complete strangers. Even ordinary users it can strain, what can we say about celebrities - thousands of people consider it their duty to add them as a friend.
Perhaps the fact is that many facebook users have moved there from LiveJournal, where the concept of "subscriber" and "friend" were not separated. Or maybe the reason is even deeper - not all people are ready to simply subscribe to someone interesting, reciprocity is just as important to them (“Oh, you don’t read me, I won’t read you either!”). Well, the vanity factor, of course, when it comes to famous people.
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In any case, it is wrong. There are familiar people, friends, and there are sources of information and fans. The separation of the “friend” and “subscriber” statuses is absolutely correct, it only remains to make them work. The only question is how to instill this culture in people, preferably without fascism (that is, deliberately complicating the procedure and forcing to act unnecessarily). And recently it dawned on me how to solve it literally without changing anything.
Since the root of the problem indicated above lies in the psychological plane (people feel humiliated, if they do not get reciprocity), then the solution should be the same: simply renaming the “Add as friend” button into “Ask for friends”.
Firstly, the current name of the button is simply incorrect: by clicking on “Add as friend” the user doesn’t actually do this, but only sends a request (and this can also be the cause of frequent additions from strangers - they just don’t understand that their action has a continuation on the opposite side).
Changing the name of the button, we align the form with the content. And we solve the problem with users who perceive the issues of “franding” too painfully: most likely, they will simply stop pressing the “Ask for friends” button for nothing, because do not want to be in the position of "asking".
Of course, this is a theory, and only employees of the Russian office of facebook can check it. But I hope that my proposal will be heard, because a single small inscription on a button can save thousands of hours to users in the aggregate, freeing them from having to deal with lists of strangers. Network hygiene is important!
PS I am sure this solution will also be useful for other services, in which there is the concept of "friendship" and "subscription". Russian is rich and allows a lot.
Perhaps the fact is that many facebook users have moved there from LiveJournal, where the concept of "subscriber" and "friend" were not separated. Or maybe the reason is even deeper - not all people are ready to simply subscribe to someone interesting, reciprocity is just as important to them (“Oh, you don’t read me, I won’t read you either!”). Well, the vanity factor, of course, when it comes to famous people.
')
In any case, it is wrong. There are familiar people, friends, and there are sources of information and fans. The separation of the “friend” and “subscriber” statuses is absolutely correct, it only remains to make them work. The only question is how to instill this culture in people, preferably without fascism (that is, deliberately complicating the procedure and forcing to act unnecessarily). And recently it dawned on me how to solve it literally without changing anything.
Since the root of the problem indicated above lies in the psychological plane (people feel humiliated, if they do not get reciprocity), then the solution should be the same: simply renaming the “Add as friend” button into “Ask for friends”.
Firstly, the current name of the button is simply incorrect: by clicking on “Add as friend” the user doesn’t actually do this, but only sends a request (and this can also be the cause of frequent additions from strangers - they just don’t understand that their action has a continuation on the opposite side).
Changing the name of the button, we align the form with the content. And we solve the problem with users who perceive the issues of “franding” too painfully: most likely, they will simply stop pressing the “Ask for friends” button for nothing, because do not want to be in the position of "asking".
Of course, this is a theory, and only employees of the Russian office of facebook can check it. But I hope that my proposal will be heard, because a single small inscription on a button can save thousands of hours to users in the aggregate, freeing them from having to deal with lists of strangers. Network hygiene is important!
PS I am sure this solution will also be useful for other services, in which there is the concept of "friendship" and "subscription". Russian is rich and allows a lot.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/184104/
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