Remember in elementary school (if you're a girl) there was usually some big fight going on about who was "best friends" with whom? It used to get so bad--us girls wanting to both single out one of our friends as special, but not wanting to hurt other girls' feelings--that we created new categories: good friend, best friend, best best friend, and the whammy: best best BEST friend.

Well, now that we old people have invaded Facebook--and people are using the site not only for personal social networking but for their professional friends as well--it occurs to me that the site really needs to do a similar thing. If I were them, I'd call these two groups "friends" and "circle of friends." Those in your circle of friends would have more access, and more permission, to see your content, than just ordinary friends. (Perhaps you could even mark or tag content as for one group only!) This would solve the problem that many people have when boundaries blur on networking sites.

It's a huge pain to maintain one site, like LinkedIn, for professional activites (not to mention the fact that LinkedIn is just... not fun) and one for personal life. Far better to be able to control who in your network of friends can see which content.

A Circle of Friends might be able to see feed posts like "I got so drunk last night!" and pictures of you when you were a kid... but your ordinary friends would only see default pictures like your profile or feeds you mark public. You can do this now with some of the apps--like gift giving--but it should be sitewide. I predict this is coming, as Facebook makes more and more of your life visible to your friends, and as more and more older people like me become active on the site. For people my age, there isn't such a bright line between "friends" and "people I work with"--but it still exists. For younger folks, especially, it's important to them that they be able to live their online life freely... and yet still accept that embarassing friend request from their boss!