

What Google+ needs to do to be awesome   - jonmulholland
http://jonmulholland.tumblr.com/post/7336128880/7-things-google-needs-to-do-to-be-awesome
#7 Push use of Circles across all Google products; I want the ability to share a Google Doc to all in my ‘Colleagues’ circle, share a Calendar Appointments to all in my ‘Friends’ circle or send a text message from my Android handset to all in my ‘Family’ circle.
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jannes

      Push use of Circles across all Google products; I want the
      ability to share a Google Doc to all in my ‘Colleagues’
      circle, share a Calendar Appointments to all in my
      ‘Friends’ circle or send a text message from my Android
      handset to all in my ‘Family’ circle.  Circle integration
      throughout Google would be a killer feature.
    

This is the most important one in my opinion. Google+ has so much potential if
integrated properly into the other Google products.

~~~
deadcyclo
I completely agree. This would be the one killer feature that would take g+
over the top. This would simply render g+ superior to all other social
networks.

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btilly
The big thing that it is missing is to let me categorize my outgoing content,
and let people only pick up what they want.

The mechanism that I would suggest is to have what I'd call "public circles".
These are circles that I have, that I can talk to, that anyone can join/leave.
That way I can easily separate out content by type (eg technical, jokes, kid
stories, etc), and not worry that pushing things out is drowning people in
unwanted types of content.

You might say that I can just add people to circles that I manage. This is
true, but it requires me to know who wants that content, and requires people
who want it to know that they can ask me for it. Both are barriers to sharing
information that I don't mind being public, but don't want to bore people who
know me in different contexts.

You might also say that this is equivalent to a simple form of tagging. This
is true, but I think that it would make for a simpler UI.

~~~
seri
That would effectively be like a Facebook Page, wouldn't it? Believe me, you
won't enjoy the signal to noise ratio within these "public circles".

I proprosed a different solution to the same problem, as explained here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738084>

Edit: On second read, I think we do share the same concept, just different
naming.

~~~
btilly
Yup, same concept, different naming.

Yet another useful variation is the idea of a public circle which multiple
people can share to, aka a mailing list. There are lots of use cases for that,
but that's not the primary thing that I am missing on Google+ right now.

~~~
Sayter
"Public Circle" variation = Facebook Groups.

~~~
btilly
Yup. There are a lot of variations on "circles" that can make sense in
different contexts. I'm hoping that Google+ adds more.

Currently I'm just categorizing people by how I know them. For instance if I
know them through work, which job(s) did I work with them in?

~~~
Sayter
You are requesting nested circles.

~~~
btilly
I am not requesting nested circles. Though a _lot_ of people have requested
that.

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corin_

      A really well crafted Google+ experience for the iPad would make it stand out.
    

I can't speak to Facebook's iPad interface as I don't use it, but G+ on the
iPad is pretty awesome in my opinion, just through safari.

It's not a native app (through the app store), but it's a really nice just-
for-ipad interface that suits me just fine.

Author: have you not tried this and are therefore unaware, or do you simply
disagree with my opinion that the site they serve to iPad users is easily good
enough?

~~~
kristofferR
Facebook doesn't even have an iPad experience, it's just the normal page with
a lot of bugs not appearing on desktop browsers. You can't create mulitple
paragraphs in comments because shift-enter is not possible etc.

~~~
calloc
Use the mobile site, or the lite.facebook.com site instead.

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DarrenLehane
Somewhat related to point 7: Integrate Circles with Google Chat, and allow
users to set different visibility per Circle.

As buggy as Facebook Chat is, this feature exponentially increases the value
proposition for me. (You can leave certain Friend Lists offline, while having
others online.)

It's 2011 and even companies like Skype still haven't implemented this,
despite it being requested repeatedly by users.

You can't honestly expect users to have the same 'Available', 'Busy', or
'Invisible' status for a chat list that could contain hundreds of people
ranging from friends and family to classmates, business contacts,
acquaintances, etc.

When working on a project, I need to appear 'Available' to everybody else
involved, while leaving other contact groups offline so as not to be contacted
about trivial matters that don't require an immediate response.

Other people I've discussed this with have said things like not wishing to be
'Available' to work colleagues outside of work hours.

The list is endless, and any company that takes Instant Messaging seriously
needs this. IM isn't going anywhere.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Regarding Circles + Chat: If you turn on chatting on Google+ it will ask you
which Circles you want to be visible to. I'm not sure if this applies to all
instances of Talk, and it looks like you can only say "I am visible to these
Circles" (later configurable with the little dropdown next to the chat list in
G+), but otherwise it seems to match what you're looking for.

~~~
DarrenLehane
You're right, to some extent it is what I'm talking about, however they state
"People in these circles who also enable chat will be able to see when you're
online and chat with you." and it feels like more of an all-or-nothing system
(adding or removing Circles entirely from Chat).

Whereas Facebook's single-click 'on the fly' interface is superior to this -
all groups always visible, one-click online and expanded, one-click offline
and collapsed.

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maxklein
All I need Google+ to do is allow me customize by default stream to only
include circles I want to see there. That's ALL.

~~~
cycojesus
and let me not display comments in the stream, people are morons.

~~~
zenspunk
Not all people. Google has simply failed at building a quality community
around Google+.

Edit: actually, it's not that they "failed," it's that they've completely
ignored the importance of community building.

For example, the difference in quality between certain reddits is like night
and day. This is all down to the way these reddits have nurtured their
community and their values of quality.

HN is good in this regard too, although it's been slowly-yet-steadily
declining due to pg's negligence of maintaining the community and managing its
growth.

Google+ will probably succeed on its format alone (that is, the required
application of circles), which will allow users to filter and select voices in
their stream. But unless someone like Vic Gundotra steps in and puts some
effort into community-building (like telling his follows to just +1 if you
like the post instead of making a comment), it's going to really suck in
public discussions.

~~~
TWAndrews
Doesn't it take more than a week to build a quality community? Seems like it's
really hard to say that they've failed already.

~~~
zenspunk
What? How does time affect the quality of a community? You could have a
community of two people that cares about quality.

Anyway, I've never seen an internet community go from crap to quality, only
vice versa.

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Pahalial
I was surprised he didn't mention two-way contacts integration. I met a new
person yesterday on G+ first, then in person; later that day he emailed me a
doc and I was surprised to find that his name/email had not been added to my
contact list from circles. This is something the facebook messages/chat
integration gets right, and Google needs to figure out how to answer it sooner
rather than later.

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dododo
events? this seems like the most obvious thing missing from g+. have i missed
it somewhere?

~~~
mindcrime
I'm thinking they don't need a separate "events" feature, but just tight
integration with Google Calendar. When I can create an event in GCal and
invite by Circles, etc., then they'll have a pretty slick "events" setup.

~~~
NolF
Don't forget that a lot of the appeal of the FB's events feature is seeing who
else is invited, who else is attending, the whole description and possible
discussion that can also occur. Sometimes details need to be organised,
comments made etc... I think it would also be cool and useful when uploading
pictures to be able to tag an event so there is an album which people invited
to the event can see and comment.

~~~
mindcrime
Sure, and I'm not arguing against any of that... I'm just saying that the way
for Google to implement "events" is to thoroughly integrate G+ with GCal, so
that you can do all those things. And I hope that's what they do, as I - for
one - don't want yet another place that I have to pay attention to, to keep
track of events.

Thankfully almost everything calendar related supports ical or some export
format that Google Calendar can handle, or it'd be a real mess. :-)

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nextparadigms
I don't like at least half of his suggestions.

But some I really don't like are 3. and 6. He does mention it should be a
sensible integration, but something like importing tweets and shares/comments
from Facebook would be the LAST thing I'd want to see on Google+. Google+
really doesn't need that kind of integration.It can grow on its own, and it's
for the best.

On 6. +1's is not really an intent of _sharing_. It's 50% of that, at most.
+1'ing is very different than sharing, and it has a much lower value than a
share, which means that seeing dozens of +1's from friends each day on my
stream would be very _spammy_. I think it's better that they keep them
separated, and more like a bookmarking feature. And it _still_ helps with
personalization of what you _like_ , but not necessarily something you want to
spam 100 friends with. There isn't much thought put into a +1, that's why it's
so much less valuable than a share. +1'ing is an impulse thing.

~~~
melvinmt
Yep, I agree on the +1 part. Sometimes I hesitate to like things with FB
because I know I'll be spamming my entire friend list. Liking is not the same
as sharing.

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tijs
All good suggestions. As for Sparks though; i wouldn't mind if they just
dropped that completely. Not sure we need another google reader and + has
enough to keep you busy as is. Would get rid of some clutter too.

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vmind
Point 7 seems like the biggest for me. Recently wanted to plan/discuss a few
days away with the family. A shared google calendar with a circle and
discussion around that would be superb for such things.

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Tomek_
For me (and I'm surprised it's not on a list): filtering incoming content. In
this regard G+ is really lacking (you can't hide a person, similar posts (or
the same post shared by many of your contacts) are not grouped together,
etc.). Circles are great for controlling who sees your posts (although,
surprisingly, FB's lists are actually more powerful), something as brilliant
as that but for controlling what you see and I'd be completely happy.

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jwuphysics
>> 6\. On that note, move +1’d sites into a users main Google+ activity
stream. Again - networks are all about the Social Objects and +1 is Google’s
method for sharing. Why hide it away in a separate tab?

Please do not do this. There are already options to share sites on Google.
Also, everytime I +1 a site on the main search page, I don't want to have to
specify which circles can see it--nor do I want everyone to see it.

~~~
thomaslangston
Agreed. Part of the distastefulness of Facebook for me was the amount of auto-
generated noise from these types of "features".

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alanh
Note we aren’t sure if the linked Google Docs form is actually an official one
from Google.

It is linked to by
[https://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6ns...](https://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6nskaX)
Christian Oestlien, ostensibly a Google+ team member, but I can’t verify if
that claim is true or not.

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OliverSteenbuck
imho set operations on circels are missing. Think:public but not family or
extend but not people_i_dont_like

~~~
omaranto
I agree, Facebook friend lists have this and it can be very useful.

~~~
smackfu
Yes, my default privacy on Facebook is "Friends; except: Work".

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dannylipsitz
How about a platform for businesses? I've noticed an emerging trend of Fortune
500 companies listing their Facebook sites in their advertisements rather than
their own location on a TLD. For instance, will facebook.com/mastercard become
plus.google.com/mastercard?

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quinndupont
Number five (5) is solved by this third-party Chrome extension (works well):
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hcieonlgpadegedlcp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hcieonlgpadegedlcpdhndifhaeahajp)

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LordBodak
APIs for third party apps. I already use Seesmic to watch my twitter and
Facebook feeds, but with G+ I have to use another app.

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DannoHung
They'll need to modify the +1 widget to be aware of your circles and allow you
to determine who sees them before 6 can happen.

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wccrawford
This is a good list. I think these are the final pieces needed to bring G+ up
to the level of all the existing sites.

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orionlogic
It's always very easy to add something rather than removing.

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alexsherrick
#7 is a killer feature... that will be awesome

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president
needs nested circles

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eugenoprea
Excellent article Jon. Shared it on Google+ :)

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paulnelligan
Make it easy for developers to build awesome apps to sit on the google+
platform - make it much clearer and more user-friendly than facebook, and
you've got a game-changer ...

~~~
rooshdi
This.

Ease of integration with app and game circles could do wonders.

