

Google Plus's Circles System May Not be Sustainable - nanoanderson
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_circle_system_may_not_be_sustainable.php

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nanoanderson
Maybe they could implement some sort of "Smart Circles" or "Nested Circles".
That could solve the author's "Work Friends" issue.

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zephjc
I noticed I started treating circles like iTunes playlists - I have a master
"All Friends" (akin to my Music Library) circle, which is a dump for everyone
who are friends (not family), then "RL Friends" and "Internet Friends".

Thinking about it, I can dump the All Friends circle because its a catch-all,
and if I wanted to post something to all my friends, I can just add RL Friends
and Internet Friends. There are certainly places I want to have people in
multiple circles (interest groups, etc) but catch-alls aren't it.

Nested Circles seem like catch-all meta-groupings that create a more rigid
structure (unless you could add a circle to more than one Circle Group, but
this seems to be over-thinking the problem and could present an unwieldily
UI).

For Smart Circles, they use the example of a work relationship changing. It
seems that renaming that circle to something else would work just as well, and
creating a new Work circle with your new coworkers in it. Having G+ try and
manage something that can be fluid and sometimes pretty arbitrary seems it
could be messy and potentially embarrassing (someone ending up in a circle
they shouldn't be in).

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zem
this is where i see a good developer ecosystem being valuable. i can well
imagine third party circle-organisation tools springing up and exploring the
ux space between them till a good, usable method evolves.

