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> In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article. Having used both Google+'s Circles and Facebook's lists, a lot of peopl
by adbge 15y ago
> In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article.
Having used both Google+'s Circles and Facebook's lists, a lot of people are missing the point. Sure, Facebook's lists may be capable of some or even all of the functionality of Google+'s Circles, but that's not addressing the important difference in functionality between the two.
Google+ has clearly been designed with Circles in mind. It's easy to tell just from using Google+ that the Circles idea is a core architectural component and not just something that was tacked on. Facebook's lists pale in comparison. They're clearly an afterthought and not many people use them.
I extensively used one of Facebook's private groups to mimic the new functionality in Google's Circles with a group of my close friends for about three - four months and, while it was adequate, it's nowhere near as polished or fluid as my experience with Circles. It's really no contest.
> But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.
To those who are saying that it would be trivial to implement Circles functionality on top of Facebook, I sincerely doubt it. It'd be like saying that it wouldn't take much to for Blackberry to adopt the same UI polish of iOS. It's comparing a system that has clearly evolved (BlackBerry, Facebook) to one that has been designed (iOS, Google+).
I think us nerds to be careful about just comparing Google+ and Facebook on what features they have, lest we need to be reminded of: "Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
- spullara 15y agoFacebook Friend Lists are far more powerful than Google Circles and Facebook Groups are an entirely different beast. At an architectural level Facebook Lists are a core feature. They even had them front and center for a few years as they asked you to populate them by "how do you know this person?" when you added them as a friend. The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the UI.
- ralfd 15y agoThis may be a stupid question: How do you use lists? I made some lists with circlehack.com. But on Facebook I don't see a way to share something with a list. I am puzzled...?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- spullara 15y agoYou press the Lock button under your post then select who you want to share with even who you don't want to share with. Customize gives you access to the all the features.
- phamilton 15y agoWith G+, I make a conscious decision about privacy every time I post something. Every post I decide where it goes. G+ keeps it front and center. Facebook has it 4 clicks hidden away and then doesn't make it obvious you can include lists when it says "These People: Specific People". I have never used lists on Facebook when posting (I have used them for messaging though... which I found annoying due to the limit to the number of people in a list). Circles, on the other had, I use with every post I make.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoYou need to have lists populated. I add people to lists as I friend them so my lists are all set. From the homepage, click "friends" in the left column, then "manage friends" button in the centre. Hover over a friend and you can "Edit lists" to add or remove them from lists (at http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/ http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/). Once you have friends in lists then you use lists like you would an email list. From the homepage click to write a status and you'll see next to the "share" button an icon (which for me is a padlock) that allows access to the functions to limit sharing. My default is "friends of friends". Choose to "customise" your shared status and you can enter either a friends name or a list name, start typing and it auto fills. There are other situations when you can use friend lists too around the site, I think pretty much everywhere you can enter a friends name. For example if you do @listname in one of your statuses then everyone in the list will get that status in their news feed. You can activate online chat for only members of a list for example. HTH.
- ipince 15y ago
- narrator 15y agoAlmost reminds me of how Microsoft promoted .NET as being a runtime capable of running code generated from multiple languages. The JVM had always had this feature but it was underutilized and somewhat obscure. After the .NET launch, it took a while of explaining that the JVM could run other languages besides Java before it became widely known in the programming community.
- statictype 15y agoI think it had to do with the fact that the CLR actually had multiple language support early on and it took Java some time to get there (with Scala and Clojure).
- kisielk 15y ago"The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the UI." That basically says to me that not enough emphasis was placed on designing the site around the feature. I think that's what Google's done right in their case, circles are front-and-center and not just another feature in an already feature-cluttered UI.
- jdhopeunique 15y agoA prime example of a fundamental feature of facebook is the concept of a single wall that all of my friends can post to. Even if I could figure out how to prevent my work/church/family friends and my college/bar-hopping/trouble-making friends from seeing each others posts to my wall, I'm still faced with an uncomfortable UI that displays posts from both groups at once. That aspect of the UI alone doesn't help me feel secure about privacy on FB.
- spullara 15y agoSame thing happens in your stream on Google+.
- neves 15y agoI'1l just believe in Circles when I find a non nerd user who has subdirectories in their My Documents folder.