

Solving The Scoble Problem In Social Networks - Garbage
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/09/scoble-problem-social-networks/

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ugh
Google+’s structure – specifically circles – allows for solutions to this
problem that would feel completely natural. Everyone who uses Google+ also
uses circles, it’s not tacked on and optional.

Circles could become a powerful tool for filtering your stream (by, for
example, allowing you to pick which circles appear in your stream by default)
and it’s certainly also easy to imagine other options, e.g. the ability to
disable notifications from certain circles.

At the moment all your circles are displayed by default and you can’t, for
example, select more than one circle at once to filter your stream. It’s
either all circles or one circle.

I can’t imagine that Google won’t add such options. The UI is a bit of a
challenge – I’m certain they want to keep it simple and not add a few dozen
checkboxes to the circles page – but certainly a solvable challenge. I’m not
too worried about it but it’s certainly true that now is the time to complain
about such shortcomings.

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Pewpewarrows
This is pretty easily solved with my current setup. I have a "Following"
circle filled with prominent developers or tech celebs whose posts I find
interesting. There are a few with the firehose problem, where either they post
constantly or have way too many people commenting on their posts. When
browsing G+, I typically just hang-out in my Friends, Family, or Acquaintances
streams. If I comment on a firehose post and don't want to see notifications
about it anymore, I just mute the post.

I could definitely see the advantage in them adding the ability to mute a
circle from the master stream.

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akkartik
But that 'Stream' page used to be useful until I added Scoble.

I want _muted circles_ , which don't show up in the Stream. That way I can
make 'Following' a muted circle and my Stream page remains useable.

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bvi
This is something that Google+ needs to deal with immediately. It's also a
problem that Twitter faces.

Certain folks tend to dominate or flood my Twitter or Google+ stream - but
muting/blocking/unfollowing them is not really an option.

From a usability point of view, it would be great to have a slider or a
similar control that will allow me to tweak how often Person X's posts are
displayed in my stream. Everyone in a Circle is not equally important.

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justincormack
Why isnt unfollowing an option?

Unlike the author of the article I do find twitter a good conversational
medium. I dont follow firehose people as it is not conversational. I havent
quite worked out how/if i will use plus long term.

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bvi
Unfollowing isn't an option because I'd still like to get the occasional post
from Person X - just not as frequently as I'd like to see posts from Person Y.

I'm not talking about "firehose people" - my point is, it would be great if I
could see (posts from Y) > (posts from X) > (posts from Scoble), even if
they're all in the _same_ Circle. Currently, everyone inside a Circle is given
the same weight.

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ender7
Previous comment here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727454>

tl;dr I really want to be able to mute people and/or entire circles. This
won't "block" them; it just means that I won't have to see their messages
unless they specifically target me.

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protomyth
If they do a decent API and don't go the twitter route, I can see some very
interesting clients that allow a lot of muting and maybe a rules engine type
construct. Twitter messed up by killing any innovation in smart clients, maybe
Google will not repeat that problem.

// yeah, I had a side project of a rules based twitter client - oh well

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DanielRibeiro
Good points. Remineded me a lot of this recent article:
[http://jamieforrest.com/2010/07/01/notifications-unread-
item...](http://jamieforrest.com/2010/07/01/notifications-unread-items-and-
information-overload/)

