
Twitter should copy Google+’s circle feature.  - skbohra123
http://www.geekybuddha.org/blog/2011/07/16/twitter-should-copy-google%e2%80%99s-circle-feature/
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athst
Absolutely not. The whole nature of twitter is about its spontaneity and real-
time nature. Can you imagine if someone had to go through the extra thought
step of "which group should I send this to?" every time they sent out a tweet?
It would ruin the service.

Also, a primary difference between Facebook (now Google+) and Twitter is that
Twitter was assumed to be public by default. It is a public form of
communication, and the Google+ style of sorting your messages into specific
buckets of people doesn't fit it at all.

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sebastianavina
I've noticed a curious trend among my friends...

Because all modern cell phones have Wi-Fi, and there are a lot of free
hotspots around the city (here in Mexico), they use twitter as SMS... They log
and send a message to their friends about the hour to hang out, and the place,
and the chat over twitter... I'm nor sure if they know it's public, or the
implications of that, but they truly do that...

I'm begging to understand twitter, as poor man's phone calls...

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dhoelzgen
I've noticed the same thing among some of my friends. However, I don't think
that's what twitter is meant (or good) for.

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dave1010uk
Google+ on Twitter would be more like a group DM. Twitter's mentions to users
are public so mentions to lists could be to. I've got a list for people at
work but to mention them at the moment I have to name them individually. It
would be great (though perhaps open to abuse) if I could tweet at my lists, or
even the lists of others. This could be implemented with another character
like "/". E.g. "@/foo" to mention my foo list or "@bar/baz" to mention @bar's
baz list.

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foobarbazetc
No, they shouldn't.

I have zero interest in managing and maintaining circles, and have already
given up on doing it in Google+.

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skbohra123
Yeah, it should be totally optional in twitter' case.

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lftl
The burden with Google+ circles, and Twitter if it followed suit, is that I
have to manage what someone else is interested in hearing from me. That’s
completely backwards for pubic sharing (which is unequivocally Twitter's
focus), especially for people with a decent sized public following who they
may not know very well.

What Twitter needs to build is a capability where I can advertise different
topics that I talk about, and then people can selectively follow everything I
tweet, or just follow tweets that I publish to a particular topic. In G+
terminology it would be like if they made my list of circles public, and then
people added themselves to circles rather than me adding them.

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devaholic
It sounds like they really just need to let me search _only_ my timeline for
whatever I want. Interestingly, I can't even seem to do this with the advanced
search (<http://search.twitter.com/advanced>)

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lftl
Timeline restricted search might solve the problem, but there are plenty of
topics where a simple keyword search may not cut it. Searching for programming
would obviously include a wide array of tweets with a wide berth of keywords.

I don't think a naive keyword search would really solve the problem. I did
consider at one point writing a Twitter client that would do simple Bayesian
filtering across a list. So you would create a list, add whoever you want, and
then flag messages as good/bad for that list, and it would start filtering.

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code_duck
Google's circle feature is incredibly useful to me. Not only will it come in
handy separating my three professional spheres from each other, it is ideal
for separating those from my family and friends. Each of these groups is
interested in and privy to different types of posts from me, and finally,
there is a way to share with all of them just what I want through a single
account.

Twitter's simplicity is at it's core, however. I don't think Twitter could
slip a system like this in very easily... nor can facebook.

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spullara
It is already on Facebook. They are called Friend Lists. You and filter your
feed and narrow publishing using them. Just like circles.

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troymc
Others have said this too, but it's not a matter of whether or not Facebook
has that feature, it's the difference in defaults. I've been on Facebook for
years and don't even know where to look for the "Friend Lists" --- and I'm a
fairly technical guy who has tweaked all his Facebook privacy settings.

With Google+, the circles are core, not just some tack-on optional feature.
The main way to share something on Google+ is by sharing it with circles.

To put it another way, the default on Facebook is to share with all "friends".
The default on Google+ is to share with nobody - but the list of options
starts with circles, and ends with the public. (Google+ also lets you include
individuals in the list, but you have to type their name or email address, so
I suspect that feature is little-used.)

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adthrelfall
Although I do use Twitter predominantly for work, seeing the odd glimpse of
someone's personal life adds depth to my understanding of them. If it's too
frequent, I unfollow. If G+ is used 'correctly' then I'd be sad to miss those
little insights in to my contacts other lives.

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jkaljundi
Twitter lists are Google circles. Twitter should just continue experimenting
and redesignng the whole lists functionality.

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techiferous
Wouldn't Google likely have a patent on the circle?

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skbohra123
I am not aware, things like these could be patented ? That would be horrible
to imagine. If that's the case, facebook may have patents on so many things,
which google+ has copied.

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dhoelzgen
I fear, at least in the US, they can be patented...

