I think a facebook twitter combo would be a pretty good solution. On a given newsfeed you should be able to see the comments of those who you are following. You would obtain those friends through a one sided relationship like twitter (i.e. they don't need to grant you permission) and you could also see the posts of those who belong to specific groups (i.e. I hate Republicans or I hate Democrats) -> that way, you could find more individuals to friend. You could perhaps also have an option to see posts from random individuals who have a high degree of popularity (i.e. many followers) so as to spice things up a bit. The ignore feature would be just as important, you could eliminate certain folks from your newsfeed or certain groups. The ignore would override any setting for group following.
It's pretty common sense and allows people to see what they want and from whom they want so I'm not sure why this has not been done. It's computationally and architecturally a bit demanding, but not much more so than facebook itself.
The downside is that you'll enable people to wall themselves off from the viewpoints of others, so there will be a lot of in-group discussions without outsiders telling them they are wrong. But this is human nature, already happens for the most part and really isn't of concern to a site that just wants to generate traffic.
Can anyone poke holes in my idea? If so, I'd actually like to hear it. I've wanted to see this type of thing for a while.
