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I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles
by giancarlostoro 6mo ago
I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
- withinboredom 6mo agoI can only imagine someone looking over my shoulder on vacation to see what I'm posting: "oh, you have a 'close friends' group; why am I not in it?" Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
- notahacker 6mo agoArbitrary labels make it really easy to give groups of close friends silly in-joke names rather than "close friends"...
- TulliusCicero 6mo agoIt's a great idea in principle, but it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with Dowsing a user's circles from their public information and Gmail inbox seems like a perfect task for AI.
- echelon 6mo agoExactly. Self-defining all of the semantic grouping metadata was too much onus on the user. Not everybody has the patience to curate and groom their social circle labels and memberships. That feels like a full time job. I spent way too much time stressing over how to define my "circles". It was not a good experience.
- lokar 6mo agoI don’t think it’s about the effort needed. The basic idea is just too complex for most people.
- alpinisme 6mo agoIt would be easy to send a notification “you haven’t interacted with Sally in 6 months, so we’re removing her from your network. Click here to add her back” or something along those lines and nobody would be the least confused. They’d probably be annoyed often enough though.
- Petersipoi 6mo agoI completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve. It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
- giancarlostoro 6mo ago> and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes. You hit me right in the gut, are we long lost siblings? Lol
- Aloha 6mo agoWindows Phone was so so good - it was THE phone I recommended to users who were on feature phones/non-smart phones because the UX was so simple and clean (and obvious) - with a side effect that if you HAD a smart phone before (Palm, Apple, Android, BlackBerry, the UX was contrary to what you were used to). Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel webOS was a lost opportunity too - in some ways it was just too ambitious for the hardware of its time.
- indolering 6mo agoI really wish I had messed with Windows Phone when it was a thing. They were the only ones not to just ship a clone of an existing interface ASAP. But it was closed source and offered no advantages for carriers or device makers compared to Android. WebOS needed WASM and a lot more to be successful. I think WASM/WASI is to the point that the next major platform build out can use it.
- Aloha 6mo agowebOS was a bit ahead of its time - it does live on in LG TV's where its done quite well.
- viccis 6mo agoWhat killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.
- onemoresoop 6mo agoThats not the only thing that killed google+ though. I think their aggressive push was their demise, forced all their users to use google+, mangled with youtube and gmail accounts and all that pissed off a lot of users.
- echelon 6mo ago> the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political. X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off. I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network complaining about politics, polarized attacks, etc.
- angoragoats 6mo ago[flagged]
- Forgeties79 6mo ago“Too political” usually means “not my politics” IME.
- angoragoats 6mo agoMaybe? But that doesn't really have much to do with my point.
- Forgeties79 6mo ago
- readitalready 6mo agoMessages group chats are the circles now.
- pants2 6mo agoAlso Discord - tons of people use Discord as a social network and keep up with friends. I must have 5 friend groups that have their own Discords with some overlap.
- segmondy 6mo agoFacebook has that feature and has for many years. That is a good idea, but there are many bad ideas that negate the good ideas even when the good ones are implemented.
- Aloha 6mo agoit goes back even further - LiveJournal, which was a social network like any other - more importantly without algorithmic optimization.
- jamesfinlayson 6mo agoApparently Facebook does/did support posting to certain groups? Maybe the UI isn't great as I never knew it was possible but a workmate told it was.
- twelvedogs 6mo agoi think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
- aembleton 6mo agoI had a few different circles depending on if friends were interested in running, cycling, hiking or computers and then I could make posts that could be just for specific groups.
- boredatoms 6mo agoCircles was a lot of busy work though
- djyde 6mo agoWeChat in China was early to implement friend group-based posting
- mandeepj 6mo ago> Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. Facebook now has 'Audience', which is quite analogous to 'Circles'