

Google: Why I joined Google+ and deleted my account 45 seconds later. - noduerme

I have to say your front-page marketing was fantastic, with the arrows like a thousand children telling you "click here" -- it almost got a died in the wool antisocial-networkist to sign on. I think the features you guys have built are awesome both from a usability and a technical standpoint, and your pitch was strong enough to get me past my objections to the privacy policy and everything else. I haven't been an active member of a social network since Friendster (and proud of it). I did have a MySpace account for a couple days, and a Facebook account for less time than that, just to check them out.<p>Thing is, I forgot why I dropped out of those, and it really had less to do with privacy than with this: There are just some people who I never want to talk to again. I know that sucks, but it's true. When I first logged onto G+ I was excited. "Wow, Matt's joined. And he's already got 12 friends! Hey, my mom's on here?! And Alex...awesome."<p>Then I started scrolling down the list and saw a face I just really didn't need to see again. Then another, and another. Not because I hate them or fought with them, but because they're the kind of people who just talk endlessly without saying anything, and waste my time. And while I have nothing to say to them, I'm not enough of a jerk to be cold to them if I run into them at a party.<p>I've got no problem being a total dick to people I hate. I got that covered. But when it comes to people I just don't want to spend time with, I do what most normal people do -- I'm polite but distant, and I make sure their access to me and their demands on my time are as limited as possible. E.g. I don't give them my phone number when I move, and I try not to let them see my photo every time they open their web browser.<p>So basically, I just deleted my account because as much as I'd like to join the hangouts with my friends, I don't want some people to see me, because then I'll have to be an asshole to people I'm just ambivalent about.<p>I gotta say, I'm a little offended by your audacity, because you're essentially asking me to categorize every single person I've ever had an email conversation with as a friend or a non-friend. That wouldn't be much fun the next time I run into them at a party or a show, would it? But I'm not sure you care about this, since your revenue stream is from commercializing the data that arises from your provision of these relationship metrics.<p>So again, I do have great respect for what you've done with the interface and whatnot... but the demands that would be placed on my time (and the intrusion into my comfort zone by people I don't want to talk to), all of which are automatically incurred by signing up for your service, would cost more in billable hours than the service is worth. And that's why I'm leaving.
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joebadmo
The second problem is the answer your the first problem. You only have to sort
as much as you need to, and sorting is exactly what will solve the problem of
not wanting to see certain people. I.e. make a circle with just the people you
want to actually keep in touch with. Add the people you have to be polite to
to a circle called "Ignore" and ignore it. Post to the circle that's your real
friends. Read posts in the circle that's your real friends. Hangout with same.

~~~
noduerme
Don't they see that I put them in the ignore circle?

And don't they see me?

And then what if they put me in their friend circle, and then I have to be,
you know, their friend?

edit: again, these aren't spammers or stalkers or people I don't like. They're
just -- kind of annoying. Neither friend nor foe, I guess.

~~~
joebadmo
They don't see that you put them in the ignore circle. You can't see other
people's circle names. You can only see if you're in someone else's circles or
not. But if you're really paranoid about it, name the circle something benign,
like "Pals."

They will only see the things you post to public or to their circle. Don't do
that.

If they put you in their friends circle, then their posts will be available to
you to see, but you will only see them if you go to the circle you put them
in. If you never go to the ignore circle or the all circles stream, you will
never see their posts.

[Edit: Your real problem appears to be that you took a mere 45 seconds to
judge a service that actually takes pains to address exactly your needs. Not
only did you not pay attention to the tutorials that describe how things work
or explore long enough to figure out, you also didn't check any of the readily
available sources of information on the subject before not only making a hasty
judgment but also deciding to broadcast your hasty judgment on a public
forum.]

~~~
noduerme
Hm. I could see which people were in my friend's "friends" circles, and which
other "friends" circles my friends were part of. I do appreciate that Google
was trying to make this less intrusive than FB is, and I've read a lot about
it before I tentatively hit the "Join" button.

But it seems obvious to me that, in one or more ways, the people I don't
really want to talk to will end up figuring out that I'm ignoring them. Let's
put it this way. My status on Skype and Google chat is always "invisible".
Always. It didn't seem like there was a way to do that on google+, and I
didn't want to risk it.

As a matter of providing a constructive criticism, I don't see anything wrong
with posting this to a public forum. This is the same note I sent them to
explain why I deleted my account. I would like to start off invisible. I'd
like no one to be able to see me unless I choose to see them. But that's not
how the site operates (I'm not even sure it could function that way, if
everyone did it) and so I'm making myself invisible in the only way I can.

~~~
joebadmo
You can see who people have in their circles as a whole, but not in each
circle individually.

It's certainly possible that someone you're ignoring will figure that out. I
would imagine that's just the price you pay in cognitive dissonance for
maintaining a relationship out of politeness. It's no different really from
them eventually figuring out that you never invite them out to events, isn't
it?

I'm not sure what you mean by invisibility. The service doesn't have presence
except in gchat, which works exactly like gchat anywhere else, and you _can_
set yourself to invisible. Outside of chat, if you don't post something into
someone's circle, then you're invisible to them by default. Am I missing
something?

------
runevault
You don't HAVE to categorize your friends, if you want you can just make one
circle and throw everyone into it, then as/if you find need create separate
circles that are subsets to match those needs.

G+ isn't perfect by any stretch, but complaining about being REQUIRED to
categorize people seems... strange.

------
vitomd
How it will be your ideal social network? Maybe there are a lot of people like
you that need another kind of network

------
yanw
You seem to have a problem with social networks in general ...

As for _I gotta say, I'm a little offended by your audacity, because you're
essentially asking me to categorize every single person I've ever had an email
conversation with as a friend or a non-friend_

No one is forcing you to categorize anyone, these are suggestions from your
contacts you can not circle them at all if you don't want to, as for the
categories they range much wider than "friend" "non friend".

~~~
noduerme
Yeah -- the problem is, what if they categorize me as a friend, and then I
have to make some kind of actual decision? Who would that benefit, when things
are just fine the way they are right now? The only people I can see gaining
from my clarification of my vague feelings about certain acquaintances would
be Google and their advertisers.

~~~
yanw
The circles are asynchronous, and you don't see which circles you're in nor do
those you "circle" see where you put them either.

