I am not a nationalist, but coming from a country that was the first to reach such a high household broadband penetration rate, I cannot help but notice that many trends that are happening in in social networking sites in the United States are those that happened in Korea a few years ago. (Of course, this is not true about everything and I am not trying to make a generalization)

One of those things is Facebook. By the time Facebook became popular, social networking sites in Korea had already seen a couple cycles of rise and fall. There was Iloveschool, which became so popular that even married people were looking up former classmates and hooking up in extramarital affairs. Then there was Cyworld, which was mostly focused on friendships. (Seven years after Cyworld was launched, Cyworld U.S. was launched but it’s not as good as the Korean version) Cyworld has been updated a number of times, and being older than Facebook, has a number of good features that Facebook could implement, especially in its photo features.

Aside from the simple photo-editing features that could be added, users should be able to categorize photos in more detail, in particularly, privacy features. It sort of all stems from the fact that Facebook doesn’t let you categorize your friends. Right now, friends are just friends. You should be able to categorize your friends (without your friends knowing which category they are in) Then, if you post a photo that you only want some people to see, it will be more convenient. That feature should be able to apply to individual photos as well as album. This way, you can conveniently avoid people without hurting their feelings and you don’t have to “block” certain people if you, for instance, break up with them.

Privacy features are a huge problem in Facebook, despite the fact that it recently updated its privacy features. For instance, if someone (who is not my friend) tags one of my friends in a photo, I click on the photo and I can see all the other photos in her album.