6 ms·

I fail to see how Circles is "high work". You make a simple decision about which circle(s) to put someone in. It's not multi-variable calculus.

stevenleeg 15y ago
Especially since this decision is required to be made when you first "follow" someone. It's not like Facebook where there's a small box for you to choose a list after you've already accepted a friend request.
skarayan 15y ago
Agreed, also it is very easy since most of my friends are already in my GMail contacts. All I have to do is drag and drop.
sliverstorm 15y ago
It's not multi-variable calculus Obviously you're doing it wrong.
- cbs 15y ago
  If we rotate this circle around the X-axis, how many people did you just accidentally send a picture of your dick?
garry 15y ago
Think about it in terms of number of mouse clicks to model real-life behavior. To be able to model n people in a system, Circles / Lists require n people making n connections, so n^2 actions. Chances are you won't even get there, so it'll be an incomplete and underused graph. For Groups, where there's a shared space, it's only n actions. Each person has to be added once.
- groby_b 15y ago
  False math. Each person takes N actions. Only the sum total across M people is NxM. Yes, it would be easier if you could share circles, but it's by no means hard work.
  - garry 15y ago
    What is M? In order for n people to connect to n-1 other people (n-1 number of additions of people to circles), it approximates to n*n, or n^2.
    - groby_b 15y ago
      Unless you set up all the circles all your friends use, you don't care. A single person will only have n-1 actions for n friends. That's why I said the SUM total is MxN
munaf 15y ago
You make many decisions if you have a high number of friends. And you do so every time you post something. It can get hairy, and it already has for me (at only 60 friends). "Why didn't Jim comment on this yet? I posted it to my Friends circle and it's totally his kind of thing. Oh, he's in Coworkers but I forgot to put him under Friends too." That's really my biggest problem with Circles in their current form. They're being themed as analogs to how we group people in real life, but in reality we're still network administrators in that we apply permissions to things that we only want certain groups to see. Admins have netgroups (netgroup = users and/or groups) whereas we have no form of inheritance/hierarchy/overlap to make things easy to remember. That said - I love Circles as an interface/vocabulary paradigm more than lists/groups, and the UI is very well-executed.
- cheez 15y ago
  If Facebook has taught us anything, there are the following classes of "friends": * People I don't really know * People I tell about the pimples on my butt or the argument I had with my wife * Work-related people I talk to on a regular basis * Hobby-related people I talk to on a regular basis Most people have 900 in the first category and maybe a few dozen in the others. That being said, the "reciprocating circle addition" UI is brilliant, I love it.
peterzakin 15y ago
It would probably be too much work if "circling" were done after following a person, but since circling is merely part of the process of following someone, it doesn't seem like that much of a burden.
- wisty 15y ago
  That's why Google+ may give Facebook a run for its money. It's a lot of work to go back and fix stuff. Starting afresh seems a lot easier. Who's trashed a personal code base because they couldn't be bothered doing a cleanup, and decided to re-write from scratch?
  - peterzakin 15y ago
    Begs the question: are circles valuable? I think that people are actually taking the time to organize their circles. You almost have to be a google+ anarchist to not organize your circles. But are people actually using circles? The only time that I use circles is when i want to filter my stream, which is useful, though not reason to call google+ a game changer. Now, what will be interesting to see is how i will use circles when i start uploading photos to google+. If i only share with the few people i'm putting in my friends circle, that could be damaging to facebook. That could be a game-changer. Also, fwiw, I'm using Google+ publicly right now, kind of like a long-form twitter.
    - wisty 15y ago
      I'd say so, as they allow a lot more styles of engagement. Want to use google+ as twitter? Use circles. Tweet out to the 1,000 people in your "tech enthusiast" circle. Want to share photos with close friends? Use circles. Google+ can be lots of things to lots of different people, without spoiling it for everything. But then, I'm an optimist. Maybe it will all be a wash. Who knows?
      - megaman821 15y ago
        If you have a 1,000 people in your tech enthusiast circle, you put them there. That is a lot of work compared to people putting themselves there. A lot of the famous people on Google+ with thousands of followers post everything publicly, not even using circles.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
It's the dragging icons around via mouse that gets tedious. Give us a command line tool for that and we're golden. :D

stevenleeg 15y ago

Especially since this decision is required to be made when you first "follow" someone. It's not like Facebook where there's a small box for you to choose a list after you've already accepted a friend request.

skarayan 15y ago

Agreed, also it is very easy since most of my friends are already in my GMail contacts. All I have to do is drag and drop.

sliverstorm 15y ago

It's not multi-variable calculus Obviously you're doing it wrong.

cbs 15y ago
If we rotate this circle around the X-axis, how many people did you just accidentally send a picture of your dick?

garry 15y ago

Think about it in terms of number of mouse clicks to model real-life behavior. To be able to model n people in a system, Circles / Lists require n people making n connections, so n^2 actions. Chances are you won't even get there, so it'll be an incomplete and underused graph. For Groups, where there's a shared space, it's only n actions. Each person has to be added once.

groby_b 15y ago
False math. Each person takes N actions. Only the sum total across M people is NxM. Yes, it would be easier if you could share circles, but it's by no means hard work.
- garry 15y ago
  What is M? In order for n people to connect to n-1 other people (n-1 number of additions of people to circles), it approximates to n*n, or n^2.
  - groby_b 15y ago
    Unless you set up all the circles all your friends use, you don't care. A single person will only have n-1 actions for n friends. That's why I said the SUM total is MxN

munaf 15y ago

You make many decisions if you have a high number of friends. And you do so every time you post something. It can get hairy, and it already has for me (at only 60 friends). "Why didn't Jim comment on this yet? I posted it to my Friends circle and it's totally his kind of thing. Oh, he's in Coworkers but I forgot to put him under Friends too." That's really my biggest problem with Circles in their current form. They're being themed as analogs to how we group people in real life, but in reality we're still network administrators in that we apply permissions to things that we only want certain groups to see. Admins have netgroups (netgroup = users and/or groups) whereas we have no form of inheritance/hierarchy/overlap to make things easy to remember. That said - I love Circles as an interface/vocabulary paradigm more than lists/groups, and the UI is very well-executed.

cheez 15y ago
If Facebook has taught us anything, there are the following classes of "friends": * People I don't really know * People I tell about the pimples on my butt or the argument I had with my wife * Work-related people I talk to on a regular basis * Hobby-related people I talk to on a regular basis Most people have 900 in the first category and maybe a few dozen in the others. That being said, the "reciprocating circle addition" UI is brilliant, I love it.

peterzakin 15y ago

It would probably be too much work if "circling" were done after following a person, but since circling is merely part of the process of following someone, it doesn't seem like that much of a burden.

wisty 15y ago
That's why Google+ may give Facebook a run for its money. It's a lot of work to go back and fix stuff. Starting afresh seems a lot easier. Who's trashed a personal code base because they couldn't be bothered doing a cleanup, and decided to re-write from scratch?
- peterzakin 15y ago
  Begs the question: are circles valuable? I think that people are actually taking the time to organize their circles. You almost have to be a google+ anarchist to not organize your circles. But are people actually using circles? The only time that I use circles is when i want to filter my stream, which is useful, though not reason to call google+ a game changer. Now, what will be interesting to see is how i will use circles when i start uploading photos to google+. If i only share with the few people i'm putting in my friends circle, that could be damaging to facebook. That could be a game-changer. Also, fwiw, I'm using Google+ publicly right now, kind of like a long-form twitter.
  - wisty 15y ago
    I'd say so, as they allow a lot more styles of engagement. Want to use google+ as twitter? Use circles. Tweet out to the 1,000 people in your "tech enthusiast" circle. Want to share photos with close friends? Use circles. Google+ can be lots of things to lots of different people, without spoiling it for everything. But then, I'm an optimist. Maybe it will all be a wash. Who knows?
    - megaman821 15y ago
      If you have a 1,000 people in your tech enthusiast circle, you put them there. That is a lot of work compared to people putting themselves there. A lot of the famous people on Google+ with thousands of followers post everything publicly, not even using circles.

SkyMarshal 15y ago

It's the dragging icons around via mouse that gets tedious. Give us a command line tool for that and we're golden. :D