

Google, Eric Berne circled friends first - yalimgerger
http://gerger.co/yalimslodge/2011/08/05/google-eric-berne-circled-friends-first/

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AndrewDucker
I find this rather ridiculous. Most people I know have multiple groups of
friends, little cross-over between them, and are happy to share different
things about themselves with different groups.

Being able to tell my golfing stories with my golfing buddies, without
worrying about boring my old uni friends, is a positive thing, and makes it
more likely that I'll update in the first place.

~~~
paganel
> I find this rather ridiculous. Most people I know have multiple groups of
> friends, little cross-over between them, and are happy to share different
> things about themselves with different groups.

That's not that ridiculous. Anecdotical evidence no. 2, neither I nor anyone I
know uses groups or lists on FB. And regarding the gulf experience, yesterday
I just posted a soccer-related status on my FB wall and I received likes from
2 ladies, one of whom I haven't seen in 15 years and the other just recovering
from cancer, either way, I wouldn't have put them in any "interested-in-
soccer" list.

~~~
AndrewDucker
I use lists elsewhere, but not on FB, because FB makes it hard to use them.

There's no way, for instance, to post to a list on their Android App, or their
mobile site.

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busted
_Games:

You and the girl have a relationship similar to the one between Maddie Hayes
and David Addison from Moonlighting. Only much much less interesting._

How the hell am I supposed to know what this means?

~~~
yalimgerger
:-). I knew I was in for this comment when I wrote this. But it fits so
perfectly, I could not help it. I guess I am getting old. :-). Moonlighting is
the TV show that made Bruce Willis famous. His character David and Maddie
(played by Cybill Shepard) constantly argued about different issues but the
subplot of every argument was their sexual attraction to each other.

Another example would be the relationship between the Marquise de Merteuil and
the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons.

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yalimgerger
Thanks everyone for the great comments. I kinda wish that you wrote these
comments to the discussions under the blog so that every reader can benefit
from it. As it is, the comments are scattered throughout the social networking
universe. :-)

I am not surprised that some of you find this argument ridiculous. It is meant
to be that way. Most of us here at Hacker News are software developers. We all
have a tendency to overengineer unimportant details in life. :-). An engineer
commented that even the Circles were not good enough for him. And he was
right. He was pushing circles up to its limits and unless Google implemented
Cylinders there was no way of pleasing him.

However, all this opposition proves my point: Grouping friends and posting
accordingly is a rather advanced feature that does not solve a problem for the
ordinary user, because the problem does not exist in the first place.

Most people don't even realize that what they post might only be relevant to
some of their friends, because most people are vain. And if their friends post
an item in Facebook that they don't care, they simply ignore it blissfully and
go about their day.

This is just fine for most people. :-)

------
Hyena
I think our grouping of friends is generally suppressed in our thinking. We
have fine-grained distinctions among our friends, but we generally don't see
it that way because they're not important re _friendship_.

Instead, we have different conversations with different friends. While this is
normally private, that's only because of how we're interacting--in person,
over chat, etc.--and not because of any desire to keep it secret. A social
media site has analogs to a more general meet-up or party in that our
conversations are often _on the side_ : we're not talking to everyone but we
don't mind people listening in.

The article's critique wouldn't have much intuitive appeal if it was possible
to create "open" circles where conversations wouldn't appear in public, but a
user who wished to see them could listen in and possibly comment, signaling
their interest in joining that group.

~~~
yalimgerger
I think if Google adds one more level of complexity to its Circles, it will be
used by 0.001% of the entire user base. :-)

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lawlit
This structure is old, and needs to be revised, since it was invented before
the internet. Now, where do I put Linus torvalds on that list ? or even Larry
Page, since they've got a G+ account and I have added them to the circle
"modern age shakers".

~~~
scott_s
Not necessarily. G+'s circles conflate "people I know" with "people I'm
interested in." This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it may even be a good
thing - but I don't think it makes the cited social distinctions invalid.

