I have very different “lives” that don't overlap and which I don't WANT to overlap. I don't need professional contacts knowing what I'm doing with my family or in my spare time; my family and friends and work colleagues don't need to know the esoteric conversations I have regarding hobbies I may have like sci-fi TV.

BUT, if I had to email a work contact from my personal email address at some point and they search their address book for potential Twitterers, I now have a professional contact – perhaps someone I hope to work for or work with – reading all the minutia of my personal life.

I don't like it at all and while I was hoping that an app like Tweetdeck would allow me to group and segregate my followers, in fact it only allows me to segregate those that I follow. And now that I have people from all walks of my life, tuning into my tweets, I can't interact on any level, with anyone, the way I'd LIKE to.

So, nope, not a fan of current paradigm. Barring creating 3 or 4 separate twitter accounts, there isn't a way to do this AND there is no app that I'm aware of that would allow me to manage multiple twitter accounts. If there is – PLEASE tell me!!

http://www.antinomian.com/2009/04/03/wtfacebook/

Our company is working on a blog oriented plugin/widget/application right now that will include some social elements similar to what facebook and twitter are currently using. I would love to get your opinions and thoughts about our current social system but i'm not sure how to initiate a dialog with you.

1. You’re friends
2. You’re not friends
3. You're friends (but you appear always offline)

One of the reasons #3 was developed was for those cases where you wanted to accept someones invite (so as not to insult them) but you really didn't want to talk to them.

In the end, i think both 1-way and 2-way follow models have their place but what is clear is that 1-way follow models have less friction involved and thus drive more connections. Is that a good thing? Sometimes;)

In any case, I appreciate your post, and it couldn't be better timed. We've just been discussing this sort of thing for a product we are working on.

With the second point though, (thanks also for drawing added emphasis to your particular sentence – good point), the title of the article itself is a bit misleading: 'Twitter's elegant design for grouping contacts' – here, in this article, I thought you'd expose some way that Twitter actually groups contacts (that I might not have been aware of). Having just three possible relationship tiers in the (Twitter) application is not a specific attempt at grouping contacts at all.

Comparing Twitter's lack of a feature to the grouping features of other apps (e.g. Facebook) is a total mismatch. One app doesn't have grouping features and the other does.

Are you saying Twitter's absence of a feature is an elegant solution?!

That's almost like saying a 4-seater people carrier with NO side-sliding doors is a 'more elegant solution' than a 7-seater people carrier WITH side-sliding doors!

I think Twitter is good for what it's designed for and used in a simple way (with low expectations), while a Social Networking site, like Facebook, can't be directly compared because it's trying to do so many other functions.
Suggesting Twitter has a way of grouping contacts at the moment is a bit far-fetched.

Aside: Facebook's security settings can't be that complex Andrew (I mean, hey: if I can work them out, they can't be that confusing! Haha!)

If anything, the more people use social media, the more relevant it will be to have some (sense) of control over what is being shown…and to who! So, YES, people will care about the '….security-esque features'.
I suspect Twitter's build is flexible enough to incorporate such features later if the need becomes sufficient. For now though, it's just not there.

Also, I do address #2, in one of the first paragraphs – my contention is that no one cares about these security-esque features because they are too complex:

“The approach that many social networks have taken to solve this is to group people into networks and friend lists. Either through self-assignment or you assigning them, people go into different lists. Of course this hurdle is basically a type of boring security configuration that consumers have historically had trouble with.”

Sorry, what's elegant about the absence of any multiple grouping options? This doesn't highlight design, this smacks of laziness on Twitter's part to develop more! It just isn't their intention to provide that feature.

There are two errors in your article too that need to be addressed:

1) Twitter has three-tiers of relationships, not four, ….'Neither of you follow each other' is not a relationship at all!

2) You've over-looked (maybe by accident) that Facebook's user security settings allow for almost limitless grouping options – you could make a different access level for co-workers, friends, people who you hardly know, family, etc.
Twitter's 'elegant' solution fails to do any of this.

There are some advantages for both approaches, but when it comes to 'grouping contacts' (the title of your article), Twitter is plainly inadequate in its present form.