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Features We'd Love to See on Facebook
Frazier Barretto, Feb 05, 2010 1302 hrs ISTFor a better social networking experience
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Profiles Friends/Work/Family
Facebook is not just a great place for friends but also a great place to keep in touch with family, especially far-off relatives. Facebook has even managed to eat quite a bit into LinkedIN, a networking site great for professionals. Now this makes things quite a bit messy as the same content that I would rather like only my friends to have a look at is now also seen by the people whom I interact with professionally, as they too are termed as friends. It gets worse if you don't want a family member to see a particular picture of yours, which you're sure won't be appreciated. Ideally there should be a provision wherein one can distinguish between what content can be viewed by which group.
Seamless Facebook & Twitter
Both Facebook and Twitter offer similar functionality of micro-blogging. Twitter in the form of tweets and Facebook in the form of status updates. I feel that there are many users who love both the services provided by Twitter and Facebook but are somehow tied down to keeping just one of them well updated or easily ignoring the other. The opinion here is obviously a two way thing wherein both Facebook and Twitter agree for a seamless updating process that does not require the user to type the same text twice. 
A Better Chat
Earlier while speaking about Audibles I spoke about the various other IM Services. Facebook too has an IM service and it sure needs improvement. It is pretty frustrating that the Facebook Chat keeps dropping connection or text takes quite a while to be sent. I like the part where the extravagance of IM is kept to almost zero but it should be more fluent. That brings me to another point and that is video chat. Once again Facebook has no option for video chat and video conferencing. It's again not something that is really considered as a feature, but is an essential ingredient of a chat service.
Clutter Free Home Page
Okay it's about time there is a button to get rid of all those Quiz Results, Horoscopes, Points or Rankings in several games on Facebook at one go. It is fun to see a few of them but for most of the time I don't want to be hitting "Hide" all the time. This is something that really gets onto my nerves. I don't have any problem with all those interaction points like the quiz, games etc. because they are a great time killer. But having stuff posted on my wall, that's just not done. However close that friend is to me I'm not interested in reading his score in some stupid game.
File Transfer
This I think is a serious need. I don't expect Facebook to offer enormous amounts of storage space to each of its users and let them host files which can be spread around and turn Facebook into a piracy hub. Instead I'm asking for a contained capacity of what files can be sent across to other users; like transferring pics that I clicked, but do not wish to post all of them on Facebook. In case I want to share pics that I don't upload with a couple of friends, the File Transfer option would be more than welcome.
Advanced Friend Suggestion
For now Facebook suggests friends mainly from a list of friends' common friend list. This should continue, but a smarter Friend Suggestion would get people linked because of the common interests they share, like movies, books, songs etc. Even people owning the same gadget could be suggested to another person with the same gadget. Or people from the same group could be suggested to one another.
Facebook Application for Symbian Phones (Non-Touch)
Well this may seems out of topic, but why can't Facebook or Nokia just get us a Facebook app for the Symbian S40/S60 devices. There is an app for the iPhone, Windows Mobile Device, even for Samsung and Sony Ericsson handsets, and more so for the Symbian S60 5th edition (Touch handsets) but none for the other S40 or S60 devices. I mean, why this treatment? It's not like I'm a Symbian fan, but why the differentiation. 
Final Word
These are a few features that come to my mind and there can be far more improvements that we as users can suggest Facebook to provide us. This will open the doors to an even better experience of social networking, and why not expect it a social networking site that has made a great impact. Please feel free to use the space below to express your feelings about the features I've mentioned or make your own additions.
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