5 ms·

My Mom has already made circles and found the drag and drop feature to be dead easy. She loves it.

by 51Cards 15y ago

garry 15y ago
You're right, the Google drag-and-drop thing works pretty well and is quite innovative. That's certainly a direct way for them to mitigate the circle-creation problem. Arguably that's actually a critical piece of making Google+ work even though Circles is an n^2 operation.
- 51Cards 15y ago
  I don't disagree that setup is a bit more work, but I think the pay-off for the individual user is very high. On top of that I expect you'll see Google introducing "Groups" as well very soon... public subscription groups that work better for a "Follow my company" type of thing. Not sure how they will implement that but I do think it is also a needed structure. Personally though I would take the Circles concept even as it stands now any day over Facebook's method of social management. I've already found myself sharing far more on G+ (despite the fact only a small part of my social graph is there yet) just because I'm not worried that Aunt Mabel will find this offensive, or I'll have to field questions from Uncle Earl about what that tech link meant.
- Terretta 15y ago
  EDIT: Derp, I'd read "n^2" as "n^n" both in a comment above and here, and even typed "n^2" while thinking it said "n^n". Sorry, garry. --- Even if you're making a circle for every person, and putting every person in every circle, it's not n^n, it's just n * n. 75×75 = 5,625 75^75 = 4.26 × 10^140 But I don't see why you'd make a circle for every person, when you can add arbitrary individuals to Post or Share permissions.
  - agscala 15y ago
    n^2 is the same as n*n.
    - Terretta 15y ago
      Heh, no kidding. I thought I saw one thing while my fingers typed what was actually there. Hate it when that happens.
    - btilly 15y ago
      Except that in many programming languages, ^ means xor, so they do very different things. As a result in programming discussions I use n2 instead of n^2 to avoid the possibility of confusion if someone tries to cut and paste formulas into code.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
I wonder how that scales when your web page shows you 150,000,000 possible people to put in your circles.
- 51Cards 15y ago
  Not really much differently than FB's UI does. Each person is in a small rectangle with the bottom part of the window split to display the circles. The top scrolls and you drag from there to the bottom pane. They will have to come up with a more compact view eventually though for long lists but they aren't too far off FB's lists for space. You can also multi-select (with a window as well) and drag a batch to a circle, as well as use CTRL to copy between circles.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Hmm, when I went to the 'show all' for people I might want to add to my circles it seemed to select from everyone who had an account (there were a lot of squares). Maybe there is a limiting function Facebook that works better. My UX friends tell me that a selection box with more than 1,000 choices in it is ineffective as a tool for initializing sets.
    - 51Cards 15y ago
      Interesting, may want to submit that as a bug. When I do a show all I get about 80-100 people but that's probably just a factor of my connections list. They will need to trim that down if it's being overly generous in suggestions.
      - ChuckMcM 15y ago
        Fair enough. A meta question is why asking the question of how someone would feel about the utility of the UX when there were many choices offered which would not be appropriate for a particular circle, gets a down vote. Is it not a real concern? Is the answer so obvious I just missed it?

My Mom has already made circles and found the drag and drop feature to be dead easy. She loves it.

by 51Cards 15y ago

My Mom has already made circles and found the drag and drop feature to be dead easy. She loves it.

garry 15y ago

You're right, the Google drag-and-drop thing works pretty well and is quite innovative. That's certainly a direct way for them to mitigate the circle-creation problem. Arguably that's actually a critical piece of making Google+ work even though Circles is an n^2 operation.

51Cards 15y ago
I don't disagree that setup is a bit more work, but I think the pay-off for the individual user is very high. On top of that I expect you'll see Google introducing "Groups" as well very soon... public subscription groups that work better for a "Follow my company" type of thing. Not sure how they will implement that but I do think it is also a needed structure. Personally though I would take the Circles concept even as it stands now any day over Facebook's method of social management. I've already found myself sharing far more on G+ (despite the fact only a small part of my social graph is there yet) just because I'm not worried that Aunt Mabel will find this offensive, or I'll have to field questions from Uncle Earl about what that tech link meant.
Terretta 15y ago
EDIT: Derp, I'd read "n^2" as "n^n" both in a comment above and here, and even typed "n^2" while thinking it said "n^n". Sorry, garry. --- Even if you're making a circle for every person, and putting every person in every circle, it's not n^n, it's just n * n. 75×75 = 5,625 75^75 = 4.26 × 10^140 But I don't see why you'd make a circle for every person, when you can add arbitrary individuals to Post or Share permissions.
- agscala 15y ago
  n^2 is the same as n*n.
  - Terretta 15y ago
    Heh, no kidding. I thought I saw one thing while my fingers typed what was actually there. Hate it when that happens.
  - btilly 15y ago
    Except that in many programming languages, ^ means xor, so they do very different things. As a result in programming discussions I use n2 instead of n^2 to avoid the possibility of confusion if someone tries to cut and paste formulas into code.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

I wonder how that scales when your web page shows you 150,000,000 possible people to put in your circles.

51Cards 15y ago
Not really much differently than FB's UI does. Each person is in a small rectangle with the bottom part of the window split to display the circles. The top scrolls and you drag from there to the bottom pane. They will have to come up with a more compact view eventually though for long lists but they aren't too far off FB's lists for space. You can also multi-select (with a window as well) and drag a batch to a circle, as well as use CTRL to copy between circles.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Hmm, when I went to the 'show all' for people I might want to add to my circles it seemed to select from everyone who had an account (there were a lot of squares). Maybe there is a limiting function Facebook that works better. My UX friends tell me that a selection box with more than 1,000 choices in it is ineffective as a tool for initializing sets.
  - 51Cards 15y ago
    Interesting, may want to submit that as a bug. When I do a show all I get about 80-100 people but that's probably just a factor of my connections list. They will need to trim that down if it's being overly generous in suggestions.
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      Fair enough. A meta question is why asking the question of how someone would feel about the utility of the UX when there were many choices offered which would not be appropriate for a particular circle, gets a down vote. Is it not a real concern? Is the answer so obvious I just missed it?