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I was fascinated by the "circles" approach Google took with G+. It felt like a great solution to newsfeed overload and directional sharing. But then Google+ fa

I was fascinated by the "circles" approach Google took with G+. It felt like a great solution to newsfeed overload and directional sharing. But then Google+ failed, and we never got to find out whether Circles worked or not

msoad 9y ago
I don't have time to clean up my inbox. Who thought it's a good idea to require manual work to "setup" a social network? Of course it failed! It was designed by engineers who spend time indenting their code to the exact right format!
- blowski 9y ago
  Joel Spolsky talked about this, with regards to StackOverflow. Engineers love organising content - tagging it, grouping it, structuring it. But most people can’t be bothered, including engineers in a hurry.
abalone 9y ago
I recall Zuckerberg commented on this. Same reason Facebook groups didn’t take off in a major way. Nobody wants to manage assigning people to groups. I also remember this slide deck from some hip product guy who pitched circles.. 150 slide hot mess.[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-presentation-that-inspired-google-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-presentation-that-i...
- est 9y ago
  > Nobody wants to manage assigning people to groups Instead we really should use NLP to automatically categorize contents. e.g. I wanna make my 50% for seriously thought-provoking articles, 20% for shitposts, 20% for news and 10% for memes.
  - blowski 9y ago
    It’s a good idea that Facebook could let you control the algorithms, but set sensible defaults. But would that help Facebook’s bottom line?
- shanghaiaway 9y ago
  Facebook Groups are a different thing and they're huge now. I believe your thinking about lists or something like that.
  - Leynos 9y ago
    Yes, the Facebook equivalent of a circle is a list. https://www.facebook.com/help/204604196335128/ https://www.facebook.com/help/204604196335128/
- DenisM 9y ago
  And yet we do it all the time when creating group messages.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Those are transient - they exist in the scope and for the duration of a conversation. You don't have to pause while sharing something a week later and wonder "who am I sharing that with again? Will the new friend I added yesterday see this, or do I have to add them to something?".
  - abalone 9y ago
    Apples/oranges.. usually there's only a few people in a messaging group.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Lately, I can't help but notice the vast number of ways social media is deficient compared to real life. In real life, you get "circles" for free! Whoever you are with in the current moment is your circle, and only they have access to what you "share" during that time period. There is some leaking through the grapevine, but we have an intution for that and usually handle it decently well. It's often even desired.
  - harlanji 9y ago
    Did you finish high school before 2005ish? You may remember a time when 80% of the population didn’t have pizza neck, now it feels like it’s flipping. Since I lost 50lbs in 2013 (only carried for 2-3yr, BA food), there’s been much lifestyle reflection, been pretty unplugged since then. By all means use tech, but reflect on what it’s adding and conduct accordingly. Tech’s been my hobby and career forever; so much potential to empower, entertain, and aid in universe construction—of course the tool has two sides.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > In real life, you get "circles" for free! Whoever you are with in the current moment is your circle, and only they have access to what you "share" during that time period. And the whole reason Facebook et al are popular is that in real life it's really hard to get all the people you want in the right "circles" (i.e. places) at the right times.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      Facebook doesn't have the circle feature. It's publish to everyone only. You can send a group message, which I suppose can sort of function like a circle, especially if it's long lived. But it would hard to manage many of those.
      - lmm 9y ago
        Actually you can create a circle (might be called a list?) and publish just to that circle. People just mostly don't bother, because managing circles is so much effort.
chrischen 9y ago
Another alternative to circles is to create groups of topics for yourself, and have people self-assign to the topics they are interested in. So rather than creating and putting people into a “Summer Trip 2018” group, you’d create a “Summmer Trip 2018” topic that you share things to, and your friends would subscribe if interested. If you frequently post about food, you could create a food topic, and people would subscribe if interested.
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  Yeah, Facebook definitely needs subreddits so I can unsub from /f/politics instead of my aunt. Unfortunately there's probably no money in it.
coatmatter 9y ago
There were a few reasons for Google Plus's failure, including Facebook: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-led-facebooks-war-to-crush-google-plus https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-... I was pretty excited when I first found out about Google+, but it was similar in excitement to discovering Facebook and also Fitocrac, yet all of that meant little upon the realisation that I wasn't truly getting value out of any of them. For a long time, I was in denial about Facebook being bad for me (I thought it was everyone else who was using it wrong) but these days I can no longer justify it in terms of productivity, benefit, etc. Simply, I need to read more books. No social network is going to help me with that; not even Goodreads (or LibraryThing - anyone remember that?).
CodeCube 9y ago
I initially liked the circles concept ... but over time I realized that _for me_, it was exactly backwards. I don't want to spend time categorizing every single person I know into these circles. Instead, I found myself wishing that I could just categorize what I post (as normal), but let everyone I know decide what category/circle to subscribe to. Every social network now has asymmetric following, but it's all or nothing ... I wish I could follow someone's tech posts, and another person's kid posts, and yet another person's political posts ... etc etc
- fwip 9y ago
  That's why the smart kids on Tumblr have ten different blogs.

msoad 9y ago

I don't have time to clean up my inbox. Who thought it's a good idea to require manual work to "setup" a social network? Of course it failed! It was designed by engineers who spend time indenting their code to the exact right format!

blowski 9y ago
Joel Spolsky talked about this, with regards to StackOverflow. Engineers love organising content - tagging it, grouping it, structuring it. But most people can’t be bothered, including engineers in a hurry.

abalone 9y ago

I recall Zuckerberg commented on this. Same reason Facebook groups didn’t take off in a major way. Nobody wants to manage assigning people to groups. I also remember this slide deck from some hip product guy who pitched circles.. 150 slide hot mess.[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-presentation-that-inspired-google-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-presentation-that-i...

est 9y ago
> Nobody wants to manage assigning people to groups Instead we really should use NLP to automatically categorize contents. e.g. I wanna make my 50% for seriously thought-provoking articles, 20% for shitposts, 20% for news and 10% for memes.
- blowski 9y ago
  It’s a good idea that Facebook could let you control the algorithms, but set sensible defaults. But would that help Facebook’s bottom line?
shanghaiaway 9y ago
Facebook Groups are a different thing and they're huge now. I believe your thinking about lists or something like that.
- Leynos 9y ago
  Yes, the Facebook equivalent of a circle is a list. https://www.facebook.com/help/204604196335128/ https://www.facebook.com/help/204604196335128/
DenisM 9y ago
And yet we do it all the time when creating group messages.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Those are transient - they exist in the scope and for the duration of a conversation. You don't have to pause while sharing something a week later and wonder "who am I sharing that with again? Will the new friend I added yesterday see this, or do I have to add them to something?".
- abalone 9y ago
  Apples/oranges.. usually there's only a few people in a messaging group.
dwaltrip 9y ago
Lately, I can't help but notice the vast number of ways social media is deficient compared to real life. In real life, you get "circles" for free! Whoever you are with in the current moment is your circle, and only they have access to what you "share" during that time period. There is some leaking through the grapevine, but we have an intution for that and usually handle it decently well. It's often even desired.
- harlanji 9y ago
  Did you finish high school before 2005ish? You may remember a time when 80% of the population didn’t have pizza neck, now it feels like it’s flipping. Since I lost 50lbs in 2013 (only carried for 2-3yr, BA food), there’s been much lifestyle reflection, been pretty unplugged since then. By all means use tech, but reflect on what it’s adding and conduct accordingly. Tech’s been my hobby and career forever; so much potential to empower, entertain, and aid in universe construction—of course the tool has two sides.
- lmm 9y ago
  > In real life, you get "circles" for free! Whoever you are with in the current moment is your circle, and only they have access to what you "share" during that time period. And the whole reason Facebook et al are popular is that in real life it's really hard to get all the people you want in the right "circles" (i.e. places) at the right times.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    Facebook doesn't have the circle feature. It's publish to everyone only. You can send a group message, which I suppose can sort of function like a circle, especially if it's long lived. But it would hard to manage many of those.
    - lmm 9y ago
      Actually you can create a circle (might be called a list?) and publish just to that circle. People just mostly don't bother, because managing circles is so much effort.

chrischen 9y ago

Another alternative to circles is to create groups of topics for yourself, and have people self-assign to the topics they are interested in. So rather than creating and putting people into a “Summer Trip 2018” group, you’d create a “Summmer Trip 2018” topic that you share things to, and your friends would subscribe if interested. If you frequently post about food, you could create a food topic, and people would subscribe if interested.

kthejoker2 9y ago
Yeah, Facebook definitely needs subreddits so I can unsub from /f/politics instead of my aunt. Unfortunately there's probably no money in it.

coatmatter 9y ago

There were a few reasons for Google Plus's failure, including Facebook: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-led-facebooks-war-to-crush-google-plus https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-... I was pretty excited when I first found out about Google+, but it was similar in excitement to discovering Facebook and also Fitocrac, yet all of that meant little upon the realisation that I wasn't truly getting value out of any of them. For a long time, I was in denial about Facebook being bad for me (I thought it was everyone else who was using it wrong) but these days I can no longer justify it in terms of productivity, benefit, etc. Simply, I need to read more books. No social network is going to help me with that; not even Goodreads (or LibraryThing - anyone remember that?).

CodeCube 9y ago

I initially liked the circles concept ... but over time I realized that _for me_, it was exactly backwards. I don't want to spend time categorizing every single person I know into these circles. Instead, I found myself wishing that I could just categorize what I post (as normal), but let everyone I know decide what category/circle to subscribe to. Every social network now has asymmetric following, but it's all or nothing ... I wish I could follow someone's tech posts, and another person's kid posts, and yet another person's political posts ... etc etc

fwip 9y ago
That's why the smart kids on Tumblr have ten different blogs.