The core relationship architecture that drives facebook is flawed. How many times have you received a friend request from someone you’ve barely met, or perhaps, never met? This happens to me quite often. When faced with this, we cycle through a series of micro-decisions before we click “accept” or “deny”. 

The first micro-decision is to decide if we know the person. Furthermore, we determine how we know the person. Where did we meet them? Have we met them? Do we know them through someone else? The final question we face is; are they a friend, or are they simply an acquaintance, or are they neither? If we determine them to be a friend, or an acquaintance, we usually accept the friend invite. If neither, then we deny.

But, then, are we saying that friends and acquaintances are the same thing? It sure feels that way to me. My news feed is populated with content from acquaintances whom I don’t particularly care about. I want content that I feel connected to. I want to know how far my sister in Michigan ran tonight. I want to find out that my colleague just created a fan page for a project we’re collaborating on. I want to hear stories from one of my best friends’ time at the World Cup. When friends and acquaintances are treated the same way, we don’t get the information that is most important to us. We’re left to sift through piles of junk, occasionally feeling a connection with a bit of information.

I propose a solution. Rather than lumping everyone into a core group, “friends”, facebook should use a system based on, “faces”. I suggest this because it solves the issue of suggesting that acquaintances and friends are the same thing. If facebook were to adopt, “faces”, we would receive “face” invites, rather than “friend” invites. Just as “like” is an easier decision for the user to make than, “become a fan”, so is “face” a lighter action than “friend”.

If I receive a face invite, then I’ll simply have to determine if I recognize the face. I do? Then I accept. While this resolves the issue of lumping everyone - acquaintances, and friends - into the category of “friends”, it doesn’t do much to deliver content that we feel a connection to.

On that front, I believe facebook has an architecture in place that could be adapted to alleviate this. The “like” action could be used behind the scenes to determine who, and what type of content I feel most connected to. In other words, as I “like” posts from people, over time facebook will begin to recognize that I’m “liking” content from the same faces regularly. Facebook could also determine that I usually like photos, or written status messages, but I never like updates from applications such as Farmville, for example. They could even go so far as to compare who and what I like, with the content my “faces” are liking to determine where the core friendships are, and where there are just acquaintances. 

These two seemingly simple changes would be incredibly beneficial for users. We would no longer be faced with a dilemma upon receiving a friend request from someone we barely know. Instead, we’re faced with the lightweight (human) action of simply recognizing a face. Not only does the core interaction architecture become more user-friendly, but the content delivered to us would be more catered to our interests as well. Beyond users’ benefits, this model would benefit facebook, as well. More connections would be made, and thus more information about those connections could be obtained. Information is valuable, and facebook knows this better than anyone. Get your face on!