4 ms·

But that ruins the idea of a Circle. If I can join into a circle, the entire idea of a circle as it relates to privacy becomes ambiguous and you lose the clear

But that ruins the idea of a Circle. If I can join into a circle, the entire idea of a circle as it relates to privacy becomes ambiguous and you lose the clear distinction that probably already isn't terribly clear among more novice users. There's a way to fix this, but it's not via public circles. There are lots of good ideas out there about how to use tagging, filtering, sparks or combinations of the three to provide a subreddit-esque layer on top of Google+ that would enable more content and options for users while still allowing my Mom to safely post her pictures to her Family circle without worrying about "Public circles".

btilly 15y ago
The key idea of a circle is that I have different kinds of content that I want to send to different audiences. Google+ currently handles that fact when it comes to private content. It does not handle that fact with public content. I agree that the whole public/private distinction is important to keep clear. But there are a lot of ways to do this. For instance make public circles blue when you add them, and private ones green. And add a tooltip to make it clear what the colors mean. In short, I don't buy the idea that "grandma can't understand this" as a reason to deny a feature that a lot of people want. And that matters disproportionately to the top content producers.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  My comment was not at all that "grandma can't understand this". I mean that the concept of Circles needs to either evolve to where it has almost a different meaning altogether AND/OR that there are better mechanisms for targetting content than circles. How many damn Circles am I going to end up with (politics, democrats, hacker, programmers, lgbt and allies, etc plus family, friends, coworkers) plus I now have circles that are used for privacy directionality and others used for announcements. But what about announcements I want to share, but just with my family? Circles are about privacy, I think that this tareted publishing is a categorically different idea and that Google doesn't even need to take the risk of muddling the Circles disinctions. Besides, I'm convinced a tagging system (cross reference links with other social networking sites, "read" the web pages and combine it with Prediction API, etc) or self-tagging or sharing within Sparks (like subreddits [if you've used them to understand how much they can change the experience of a social networking site], or even better because the conversation is smaller and more intimate) I feel like shoving it into Circles is brash and missing a good opportunity.
- bermanoid 15y ago
  In short, I don't buy the idea that "grandma can't understand this" as a reason to deny a feature that a lot of people want. Along those lines, what people are asking for here is pretty much the ability to make Google+ a bit more like Twitter. From conversations with grandma and her ilk, grandma doesn't get Twitter, either, so I don't think you're losing very much. Google+ seems to be positioning itself as the Android to Facebook's iPhone, for people that want more control and don't mind jumping through a few more hoops as long as they have it. I think they've still got some complexity to burn, especially if they continue to make the UI as easy to comprehend as it's been thus far.
thomaslangston 15y ago
We could just give them a name other than "Circle", like "Public Topics", "Broadcast Channels", or "Columns". Personally though I don't think it is confusing to have Public and Private circles.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  They're completely different concepts though. One is "I don't want these people to be able to see this". The other is "I want to publish this at people who are interested". When I publish a post via my +blog, and it's about my piece of software, I want to publish it to my project followers, but I don't necessarily want to target it at my family. Does that mean I want to hide it from my family? Not necessarily.
  - thomaslangston 15y ago
    Public circles are different than private circles, but I don't find the difference disconcerting. Both are "I am publishing" but in private circles (text, email, conversation) "I indicate who is my audience" and public circles (twitter, blog, presentation) "The audience is self-selecting". Allowing the audience to merely filter by author is not sufficient. The need to solve this problem is palpable, although Google is not clear when or how they will address this problem. http://anyasq.com/79-im-a-technical-lead-on-the-google+-team#507 http://anyasq.com/79-im-a-technical-lead-on-the-google+-team...
  - roundsquare 15y ago
    But wait. With your blog now, either your family gets an update (maybe via an RSS feed) or they check it periodically. The same would be true of a public circle. Either they join the public circle an get an update when you post or they can check the content of the public circle whenever they want (assuming you don't need to join the circle to see its content).
GreenNight 15y ago
They could add google groups to the google+ environment. Create a minecraft group with only the manager being able to post there but that anyone can see and you have what he wants. Create a minecraft group with open/moderated subscribership and you have a typical forum. Create a minecraft group with private subscription and you have your private channel. For this groups should be both a persona and a circle. The group persona is who you follow to read, the group circle is who will have access to the information (like in the google groups). Now it recognises the groups and gets the images from there if you add one, but there's no place in the group to add "accept posts from google+", and no place in google+ to "read from the groups I'm subscribed".

btilly 15y ago

The key idea of a circle is that I have different kinds of content that I want to send to different audiences. Google+ currently handles that fact when it comes to private content. It does not handle that fact with public content. I agree that the whole public/private distinction is important to keep clear. But there are a lot of ways to do this. For instance make public circles blue when you add them, and private ones green. And add a tooltip to make it clear what the colors mean. In short, I don't buy the idea that "grandma can't understand this" as a reason to deny a feature that a lot of people want. And that matters disproportionately to the top content producers.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
My comment was not at all that "grandma can't understand this". I mean that the concept of Circles needs to either evolve to where it has almost a different meaning altogether AND/OR that there are better mechanisms for targetting content than circles. How many damn Circles am I going to end up with (politics, democrats, hacker, programmers, lgbt and allies, etc plus family, friends, coworkers) plus I now have circles that are used for privacy directionality and others used for announcements. But what about announcements I want to share, but just with my family? Circles are about privacy, I think that this tareted publishing is a categorically different idea and that Google doesn't even need to take the risk of muddling the Circles disinctions. Besides, I'm convinced a tagging system (cross reference links with other social networking sites, "read" the web pages and combine it with Prediction API, etc) or self-tagging or sharing within Sparks (like subreddits [if you've used them to understand how much they can change the experience of a social networking site], or even better because the conversation is smaller and more intimate) I feel like shoving it into Circles is brash and missing a good opportunity.
bermanoid 15y ago
In short, I don't buy the idea that "grandma can't understand this" as a reason to deny a feature that a lot of people want. Along those lines, what people are asking for here is pretty much the ability to make Google+ a bit more like Twitter. From conversations with grandma and her ilk, grandma doesn't get Twitter, either, so I don't think you're losing very much. Google+ seems to be positioning itself as the Android to Facebook's iPhone, for people that want more control and don't mind jumping through a few more hoops as long as they have it. I think they've still got some complexity to burn, especially if they continue to make the UI as easy to comprehend as it's been thus far.

thomaslangston 15y ago

We could just give them a name other than "Circle", like "Public Topics", "Broadcast Channels", or "Columns". Personally though I don't think it is confusing to have Public and Private circles.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
They're completely different concepts though. One is "I don't want these people to be able to see this". The other is "I want to publish this at people who are interested". When I publish a post via my +blog, and it's about my piece of software, I want to publish it to my project followers, but I don't necessarily want to target it at my family. Does that mean I want to hide it from my family? Not necessarily.
- thomaslangston 15y ago
  Public circles are different than private circles, but I don't find the difference disconcerting. Both are "I am publishing" but in private circles (text, email, conversation) "I indicate who is my audience" and public circles (twitter, blog, presentation) "The audience is self-selecting". Allowing the audience to merely filter by author is not sufficient. The need to solve this problem is palpable, although Google is not clear when or how they will address this problem. http://anyasq.com/79-im-a-technical-lead-on-the-google+-team#507 http://anyasq.com/79-im-a-technical-lead-on-the-google+-team...
- roundsquare 15y ago
  But wait. With your blog now, either your family gets an update (maybe via an RSS feed) or they check it periodically. The same would be true of a public circle. Either they join the public circle an get an update when you post or they can check the content of the public circle whenever they want (assuming you don't need to join the circle to see its content).

GreenNight 15y ago

They could add google groups to the google+ environment. Create a minecraft group with only the manager being able to post there but that anyone can see and you have what he wants. Create a minecraft group with open/moderated subscribership and you have a typical forum. Create a minecraft group with private subscription and you have your private channel. For this groups should be both a persona and a circle. The group persona is who you follow to read, the group circle is who will have access to the information (like in the google groups). Now it recognises the groups and gets the images from there if you add one, but there's no place in the group to add "accept posts from google+", and no place in google+ to "read from the groups I'm subscribed".