Friends vs. 
Followers / Following
I was pondering connection models this morning for Givvy. At some level, the concept of friends - which is how 99% of all social sites seem to organize connections - makes sense. We could go with the Facebook model here at Givvy and allow people to invite other members to be their friends. The key is that the invitee needs to agree to become friends. This means that only people you know and trust will be able to keep track of your charitable giving activity (note - we will never share $, just causes or types of causes - and you can control privacy so nothing can be shared).
Alternatively, we could enable the Twitter model of “Following and Followers” where I can follow (track) anybody and their charity activity, and anybody can follow (track) me/mine. If I follow you and you follow me, we can be more like friends. Perhaps, in fact, we can do just that. If both members follow each other, they are friends and have even deeper views into each other’s activity.
Still need to think about this, but the idea of using a following/follower model has some attractive qualities.
Filed under: Community, Features | Tagged: facebook, follower, following, friends, social model, twitter
