The Friends List

In “Sociality Through Social Network Sites,” Nicole B. Ellison and Danah M. Boyd give insight to the developments of social network sites and offer an analytical framework for exploring these mediums. 

The “Friends” list is one of the three defining features of a social network site (SNS) according to Ellison and Boyd. The other two being the profile and the functional ability to roam those connections. The friends list serves a purpose on social media sites. It describes who can access what content, displays relationships, and allows viewers to browse profiles and find mutual friends. 

As social media has changed, so have these features. The assertion of the friends list has become more essential for two reasons: the rise of media streams and third-party technologies using the “social graph” as a way to organize content and the algorithm. The social graph is defined as the global network of linkages between all individuals within a system. 

Social media designers have developed different strategies to help people manage their network. For example, MySpace welcomed the “Top 8” to allow users to choose their top 8 favorite friends that would be displayed on their profile. Facebook used algorithms to organize and prioritize updates based on who people interacted with the most, while also allowing users to adjust this by hiding content from certain people. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube all allow people to build private lists to organize their connections so they can only consume specific content.

However, this article failed to mention one prominent social media: Snapchat. Snapchat was released in 2011 and one of its main features was The Best Friends List, which allowed users to view other users' top three best friends- the people they snapchatted the most. In 2015, this was taken away as some people felt it was a breach of privacy. Although a lot of users were sad to see this feature leave, many were thrilled to be able to communicate more privately on the app.

This was a popular, yet invasive feature that was replaced with Friend Emojis. This allowed one’s Snapchat network to be more confidential and less exposing. Snapchat says that, “Friend Emojis are a fun way to learn a little more about your friends on Snapchat!”

With this feature, one of seven emojis is displayed next to someone’s name and each one has a different meaning. The emojis are the double pink heart, the red heart, the gold heart, the blushing smile, the grimace, the sunglasses and the flame. Respectively, they represent a user as a Super BFF, BFF, Besties, BFs, Mutual Besties, Mutual BFs and a Snapstreak!

Instead of directly exposing the user’s Best Friends list, this element lets people discover and put together who other users are connecting with in a more playful and vague way. It kind of allows people to play detective and is less intrusive to Snapchat users.

I personally like the privacy of being able to Snapchat whoever I want without people knowing, but what do you think? Should Snapchat bring back the Best Friends list for all users to see?