Facebook's Redundancy Dilemma:  How many ways can you poke a cat?

Several months ago I got an email notification from Facebook that my brother-in-law had designated me as a member of his family.  The invite wanted to know if I would add a new Family Tree style application to my Facebook page and thus connect, not just with my brother-in-law but with all of my other family and extended family members in the Facebook realm.  It sounded like a great idea.  I added the app and invited all of my friends who were also family to add it too.  I was happy.

A couple of months later I received a very similar looking email from a cousin from my father’s side of the family.  “Great!” I thought, “this is really taking off.  I’ll be able to build a real family tree in no time.”  But when I looked a bit closer I realized that while this app look a lot like the previous one, it was not the same.  The name was different.  The features, though essentially the same, had slight differences.  And worst of all, family members connected to the old application were not connected to this one and vice versa.  My vision of an organically grown family tree was clouding.

And so I was faced with a dilemma.  Should I:

• Add the new app and run it in parallel with the old, keeping track of 2 parts of my family in separate environments (killing the main value of the application showing me my whole extended family)?
• Add the new app and re-invite all of my extended family members to do the same (creating the same dilemma for each of them in turn)?
• Refuse the new app and instead ask my cousin to use my old app instead so that I could keep everyone in one place (knowing that he may have just fought through this same dilemma and opted on a different course)?

At the time I opted for course 1 (mostly because I’m notoriously non-confrontational).  However when I recently received an invitation for yet a third family tree style app from a cousin on my mother’s side, I realized there was a 4th course of action and one I’m afraid most people will take.  I ignored it.  How many dilemmas do I need anyway?

Ever since Facebook opened its development platform there has been a steady stream of cool, not so cool, intriguing and annoying user generated applications spreading virally from member to member.  The upside is obvious.  Lots of creative energy all poured in to diversifying and deepening my Facebook experience. 

There are a number of downsides that have been discussed: 

• Loss of the clean feel Facebook once had (‘myspacification’)
• Increase in unwanted emails from friends not quite savvy enough to be selective in who they invite to join
• Dilution of good content with loads of questionable applications (Do I really need to know what Transformer I am?)

But I think the issue of redundant apps is the biggest one for me because it attacks its own value.  The dilemma I faced last month is not confined to Family tree style apps.  There are myriad Poke Me, Be a Red Sox fan, and Map Your Friends apps out there.  Since your friends each have their favorites,  you either have to blindly add them all and dilute the power of each, ignore them all, or choose a few and only interact with those few friends that choose the same.

Left unchecked I’m thinking there are a couple of ways this can play out – and various families of applications may play out differently.  One, each family spawns a ‘killer app’ that is so much better than the existing apps that large groups of users all see that the choice is clear.  Two, the proliferation of redundant apps continues to increase and the value of each continues to diminish until nobody wants them anymore.

Can and should Facebook promote the first outcome?  That’s another post for another day.