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I'm really looking forward to trying this out, and here's why: With Facebook, I felt as if I was on this huge football field with all of my 'friends.' I could
by kyro 15y ago
I'm really looking forward to trying this out, and here's why:
With Facebook, I felt as if I was on this huge football field with all of my 'friends.' I could lean in to whisper with a friend here and there, or even put on some face paint and huddle together with like-faced friends to form a group. But everyone could still see me, and I could see them – I just had to peer down the field. I can't really say things to my group that I'd normally say in private because with all these people on the field with me, someone would certainly overhear us!
With Google+ the structure is different. Rather than a field, it's more like a big building with many rooms. Each room can be decorated and tailored to a specific group of friends who hang out there. Best part is once I'm in the room, I can close the door and be myself! I can go up two levels, change hats, and walk into a different room.
tl;dr Google+ lets me fully engage my various social sides, whereas Facebook never really let you as you were always in the eye of the public.
Edit: One thing I did notice that I wish they would change is that it seems as if a friend can only be placed into one circle. Often times there's a lot of overlap among my social circles and friends may be part of at least two different groups.
- chc 15y agoI feel like this could be a real selling point. Different relationships call for different social etiquette, but Facebook only has "friendship" with some really shoddy support for grouping friends. It's not even about being deceptive or ashamed of yourself, any more than you're deceiving your boss by not smoking in the office and speaking more respectfully than you would to your drinking buddies.
- barista 15y agoIt is possible to do what you are trying to do (Say things to a private group) on facebook even today but I don't know why they have made it so hard to use. I literally had to spend 15 minutes figuring it out and spend time to configure it. But even with all that I am fairly confident that Google+ will fail to take off just like many of Google products lately. All they have introduced is a small set of features that facebook lacks. FB can add those in a matter of few months and then take out the whole reason for users to switch. Social networks are very very sticky.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- chc 15y agoNot only is it painful to configure, but it only works with their desktop Web client. Mobile phone users can talk to everybody or nobody.
- barista 15y agotrue. apparently windows phone has a concept of groups too but then that does not sync with the lists that you have on facebook.
- lparry 15y agoThe iPhone client handles groups to an extent. You can pick one group to see a status update, but can't pick multiple groups, exclusions or custom on-the-fly groups
- ern 15y agoIf they feel threatened enough by Circles, I have no doubt that they will make it more visible, and available on all platforms. That said, it's surprising how few people, even tech savvy ones seem to know about the functionality even though it's been around for ages. In fact, FB used to have a "how do you know this person" question when you added a friend, and they confirmed the relationship when they accepted, which is gone. It could be that they believe that most users don't want to segment their friends by categorizing them.
- donaq 15y ago"Social networks are very very sticky." I have to disagree with this. Remember Friendster and MySpace?
- barista 15y agowell they are not as sticky as a super glue may be like a gluestick :) What I meant is that by virtue of being sticky, it gives FB enough time to attain feature parity with google+ thereby removing a reason for me to switch. Unlike a search engine where the stickiness is just a habit.
- dirtyaura 15y agoI'm testing Google+ as we speak. I can confirm that you can add people to several circles. However, I haven't yet been able to test how people in those circles see an item that you share. As far as I've understood, Circles are your personal aliases for groups of people and they are not visible to other people. This is really useful in certain situations, but it can also create some confusion when people are commenting and discussing about your photo, as they don't have clear visibility who else is seeing the photo and their comments.
- dirtyaura 15y agoOkay, tested also how Circle is visible to a receiver. It seems to be like I explained above, i.e. Circle is your private alias for a group of people. The receiver account was not part of Google+ so things might work differently when sharing between Google+ users. The photo just shows Visibility: "Limited", no visibility who else is seeing the photo.
- rictic 15y agoIf you click or hover over the `Limited` then you can see who it's shared with. disclosure: I work for Google, but not on Google+
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dirtyaura 15y agoIt doesn't show them for non-Google+ users, but I assume that Google thought it's a marginal use case in the long run ;-)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Pistos2 15y agoFWIW, Diaspora has had "aspects" from very early on in its development.
- vibragiel 15y agoI've checked and you can add a contact to as many circles as you want.
- CalixJumi 15y ago¿Anyone can send me an invitation? :D