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I think Circles was a great example of what Google+ got wrong. If you are an alien species observing human interaction, you'll notice that it really is how peo

I think Circles was a great example of what Google+ got wrong. If you are an alien species observing human interaction, you'll notice that it really is how people interact, they have different circles of friends or contacts that they might want to share things with, and a "circles" feature is a great way to organize your social network. What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize all their friends into circles. Our social circles are not hard-edged and fixed, they're fuzzy and context-dependent.

jyrkesh 8y ago
> What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize all their friends into circles. I actually found an weird satisfaction from doing this. It was beneficial for about a month until everyone I knew decided G+ was a ghost town. I've been checking on how to simplify, gamify, or automation the categorization/labeling aspect for years. I think it would totally change the game on the flat news feed problem.
- aeternus 8y ago
  It might be beneficial, but it is way too high-friction for most people. The group-based messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kakao, Discord have basically achieved this same concept of pre-defined audiences using a much more familiar and low-friction concept (rich group chat).
- notatoad 8y ago
  The obvious solution to me is an intelligent algorithm that decides which of the content in your feed you'll be most interested in and surfaces that for you. And this is exactly what facebook is trying to do. It's obviously a difficult problem though, and they make the wrong call a lot of the time.
  - naravara 8y ago
    They make the wrong call because they aren't focused on surfacing content you're interested in, they're focused on surfacing content that gets a rise out of you.
  - vannevar 8y ago
    A really key piece of information missing from that algorithm is your relationship with the people posting. Sure, an algorithm could infer that, but right now they're terrible at it. Why not just let people specify their relationship and how often they want to see content from someone? Facebook's problem from a user perspective is that the ideal social network for users looks nothing like the ideal social network for maximum profitability, which is what they're trying to build. FB's only hope for the future is to use marketing to convince people that they actually want its brand of dystopia.
- vannevar 8y ago
  I agree, I think Circles was great. Between family and actual friends, most people have probably less than 100 contacts to manage. The rest could be lumped into Followers. Even for those, over time, machine learning models could suggest circles to put them in, or even assign them automatically with a manual override if you didn't like the placement. But the basic idea of Circles is sound, and the biggest thing wrong with Facebook (from a user perspective, anyway), is that it doesn't provide something comparable.
egypturnash 8y ago
Shit, back before G+ called this “circles”, we had “friends groups” on Livejournal, and I sure do remember my friends making a good number of posts that they notes were locked to one group or another. And these were not programmers for the most part, they were artists and writers and other non-technical types. You’d decide to start following someone and you’d get a screen with checkboxes for all your friends groups, so you could add them to whichever ones you felt appropriate. It was super easy. Or do it later if your feelings on who you wanted to share particular things with changed.
rhizome 8y ago
Think of it less as categorizing your friends as tagging them. Facebook is the zenith of "explicitly categorizing friends" into friend groups, and as you surmise it's a pretty bad way to go. That, and their group-visibility settings on posts is clunky enough to make me think it's designed so that people stop trying and just post everything to everybody.
atombender 8y ago
In my opinion, circles got it wrong because it got the arrow of direction wrong. Look at Instagram. Many people have multiple accounts, which is a feature built into Instagram itself. It's easy to switch accounts. An individual might have one account (possibly private) for their personal feed meant for friends and family, another account for their instafluencer persona who travels the word taking selfies, and perhaps they have another one for their instafluencer merch shop or whatever. For everyone using IG, these appear as distinct profiles. The consumer chooses which one to follow. Google Plus gave you one profile, and then made it so that you, the producer of content, chose which followers to target. Obviously, the technical difference is very slim; for the "producer" there's less difference. And the circle feature isn't without merit. But Google didn't realize that just routing stuff to different places isn't what people want. Putting a filter (which is what the circles feature could be seen as) on your own stuff is actually the last thing most people want. That's as exciting as doing laundry.

jyrkesh 8y ago

> What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize all their friends into circles. I actually found an weird satisfaction from doing this. It was beneficial for about a month until everyone I knew decided G+ was a ghost town. I've been checking on how to simplify, gamify, or automation the categorization/labeling aspect for years. I think it would totally change the game on the flat news feed problem.

aeternus 8y ago
It might be beneficial, but it is way too high-friction for most people. The group-based messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kakao, Discord have basically achieved this same concept of pre-defined audiences using a much more familiar and low-friction concept (rich group chat).
notatoad 8y ago
The obvious solution to me is an intelligent algorithm that decides which of the content in your feed you'll be most interested in and surfaces that for you. And this is exactly what facebook is trying to do. It's obviously a difficult problem though, and they make the wrong call a lot of the time.
- naravara 8y ago
  They make the wrong call because they aren't focused on surfacing content you're interested in, they're focused on surfacing content that gets a rise out of you.
- vannevar 8y ago
  A really key piece of information missing from that algorithm is your relationship with the people posting. Sure, an algorithm could infer that, but right now they're terrible at it. Why not just let people specify their relationship and how often they want to see content from someone? Facebook's problem from a user perspective is that the ideal social network for users looks nothing like the ideal social network for maximum profitability, which is what they're trying to build. FB's only hope for the future is to use marketing to convince people that they actually want its brand of dystopia.
vannevar 8y ago
I agree, I think Circles was great. Between family and actual friends, most people have probably less than 100 contacts to manage. The rest could be lumped into Followers. Even for those, over time, machine learning models could suggest circles to put them in, or even assign them automatically with a manual override if you didn't like the placement. But the basic idea of Circles is sound, and the biggest thing wrong with Facebook (from a user perspective, anyway), is that it doesn't provide something comparable.

egypturnash 8y ago

Shit, back before G+ called this “circles”, we had “friends groups” on Livejournal, and I sure do remember my friends making a good number of posts that they notes were locked to one group or another. And these were not programmers for the most part, they were artists and writers and other non-technical types. You’d decide to start following someone and you’d get a screen with checkboxes for all your friends groups, so you could add them to whichever ones you felt appropriate. It was super easy. Or do it later if your feelings on who you wanted to share particular things with changed.

rhizome 8y ago

Think of it less as categorizing your friends as tagging them. Facebook is the zenith of "explicitly categorizing friends" into friend groups, and as you surmise it's a pretty bad way to go. That, and their group-visibility settings on posts is clunky enough to make me think it's designed so that people stop trying and just post everything to everybody.

atombender 8y ago

In my opinion, circles got it wrong because it got the arrow of direction wrong. Look at Instagram. Many people have multiple accounts, which is a feature built into Instagram itself. It's easy to switch accounts. An individual might have one account (possibly private) for their personal feed meant for friends and family, another account for their instafluencer persona who travels the word taking selfies, and perhaps they have another one for their instafluencer merch shop or whatever. For everyone using IG, these appear as distinct profiles. The consumer chooses which one to follow. Google Plus gave you one profile, and then made it so that you, the producer of content, chose which followers to target. Obviously, the technical difference is very slim; for the "producer" there's less difference. And the circle feature isn't without merit. But Google didn't realize that just routing stuff to different places isn't what people want. Putting a filter (which is what the circles feature could be seen as) on your own stuff is actually the last thing most people want. That's as exciting as doing laundry.