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Being able to control your connections is a good thing, and eventually becomes very important. But enabling a "don't make me think" approach by default would lo
by fab13n 15y ago
Being able to control your connections is a good thing, and eventually becomes very important. But enabling a "don't make me think" approach by default would lower the barrier to entry. 99% of non-geeks hate to consciously categorize stuff in general, and people in particular.
That being said, this could be easily fixed: add a special "all my contacts" circle which contains everyone I've ever added: people can be in the all-my-contacts circle without being into any other normal circles, but as soon as they're in a normal circle they also go into all-my-contacts. Then I can opt into circle categorization when it becomes necessary, rather than before I've decided whether G+ is nerdier and more cumbersome to use than FB.
- pieter 15y ago> But enabling a "don't make me think" approach by default would lower the barrier to entry. Isn't that Buzz did and everyone found creepy?
- fab13n 15y agoThe problem with buzz was that it put people in your list without asking you first. Here I'm just talking about putting everyone you add in the same bucket, until you (maybe) realize that you want several distinct buckets. That would be Facebook-like, not Buzz-like. Adding people in a list doesn't count as making people think, because the targeted audience has already been trained to this by Facebook.
- ignifero 15y agoI disagree. I think asking people to organize their friends gives a very personal touch, and the interface is so intuitive it's hard to be confused. I think people will actually like how they can have control their friends and will fiddle about with it. It would be interesting for google to release statistics on how much time people spend organizing their circles.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- fab13n 15y agoI believe you base your estimation on the kind of people you typically frequent; they are representative of neither the average population, nor the population targeted by social network sites, nor the kind of people advertisers (those putting money in all this, a.k.a "the Customers") value most. That's fine: my friends aren't representative of anything relevant here, nor are most of HN people's, nor are Googlers'; but I don't think G+ could be considered successful if it ends up catering mostly to overeducated uber-geeks. I think there's still a risk that Google will be known to have created Orkut for Brazilians, and G+ for nerds. I partially agree with you, though: the feature offered by circle is very useful, very well executed, and very accessible; not having it in FB greatly limits what I post on it, and plenty of people can end up loving it, if it's introduced to them properly (not only geeks). Still, it ought to be easier to start using G+ the way one used FB, and introduce circle control more progressively, as people become conscious of the need. Not for me: for the couple of non-geeks I occasionally socialize with, and whom I want to have in my social network.
- ignifero 15y agoMaybe the facebook crowd is not what Google's going after. It seems most of the early adopters are geeks and the twiterrati. Remember that facebook did not grow in geek circles.
- fab13n 15y agoGoogle's after people who click on ads.
- dkarl 15y agoI think fine-tuning levels of intimacy and deciding which contexts different people should be included and excluded in is something that everyone does a little bit and some people spend much of their waking lives obsessing over. It will feel natural to invest time and effort into managing their Circles in Google. You can think of it as something to do with your hands while you think about your social relationships, or as a ceremonial way to mark changes in your social graph.