

Google Circles is high work and low return - garry
http://garry.posterous.com/google-circles-is-high-work-and-low-return-wh

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nollidge
I fail to see how Circles is "high work". You make a simple decision about
which circle(s) to put someone in. It's not multi-variable calculus.

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peterzakin
It would probably be too much work if "circling" were done after following a
person, but since circling is merely part of the process of following someone,
it doesn't seem like that much of a burden.

~~~
Swizec
You only have a finite amount of decisions you can make in a day. Do you
really want to spend them putting labels on people?

Also you should remember that "putting labels on people" is generally
considered kind of a bad thing to do. It certainly isn't something we openly
brag about in the real world ...

Personally I only have one circle and everyone goes in.

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JoeCortopassi
No need to downvote someone who has a differing opinion. Last thing we need is
for HN to be an echo chamber of people we agree with

~~~
danssig
This person's post was bizarre and potentially offensive. They're basically
saying that people are using circles to stereotype (wtf!).

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dkarl
So my Circles won't grow organically out of my control? Good. That's the
point. Don't use the screwdriver to hammer nails.

~~~
fab13n
Being able to control your connections is a good thing, and eventually becomes
very important. But enabling a "don't make me think" approach by default would
lower the barrier to entry. 99% of non-geeks hate to consciously categorize
stuff in general, and people in particular.

That being said, this could be easily fixed: add a special "all my contacts"
circle which contains everyone I've ever added: people can be in the all-my-
contacts circle without being into any other normal circles, but as soon as
they're in a normal circle they also go into all-my-contacts. Then I can opt
into circle categorization when it becomes necessary, rather than before I've
decided whether G+ is nerdier and more cumbersome to use than FB.

~~~
ignifero
I disagree. I think asking people to organize their friends gives a very
personal touch, and the interface is so intuitive it's hard to be confused. I
think people will actually like how they can have control their friends and
will fiddle about with it. It would be interesting for google to release
statistics on how much time people spend organizing their circles.

~~~
fab13n
I believe you base your estimation on the kind of people you typically
frequent; they are representative of neither the average population, nor the
population targeted by social network sites, nor the kind of people
advertisers (those putting money in all this, a.k.a "the Customers") value
most.

That's fine: my friends aren't representative of anything relevant here, nor
are most of HN people's, nor are Googlers'; but I don't think G+ could be
considered successful if it ends up catering mostly to overeducated uber-
geeks. I think there's still a risk that Google will be known to have created
Orkut for Brazilians, and G+ for nerds.

I partially agree with you, though: the feature offered by circle is very
useful, very well executed, and very accessible; not having it in FB greatly
limits what I post on it, and plenty of people can end up loving it, if it's
introduced to them properly (not only geeks). Still, it ought to be easier to
start using G+ the way one used FB, and introduce circle control more
progressively, as people become conscious of the need. Not for me: for the
couple of non-geeks I occasionally socialize with, and whom I want to have in
my social network.

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dkarl
I think fine-tuning levels of intimacy and deciding which contexts different
people should be included and excluded in is something that everyone does a
little bit and some people spend much of their waking lives obsessing over. It
will feel natural to invest time and effort into managing their Circles in
Google. You can think of it as something to do with your hands while you think
about your social relationships, or as a ceremonial way to mark changes in
your social graph.

~~~
fab13n
I'm sure 90% of G+ers will do it and enjoy it.

My point was only that figuring out how to organize your graph into circles
shouldn't have to be the first thing you've to do before discovering G+. This
question (how to organize one's social graph, even roughly) is not trivial at
all; if the very first thing G+ demands from you is to figure out a very
personal and non-trivial question, it will negatively affect people's
perception of the product.

Think of how annoying it is to enter a serial number when installing a new
software: it's not a big deal, it's not difficult, and you'll hopefully only
do it once. However, that's your software bugging you before your first real
contact, and before it earned your respect. Highly irritating for many people.
We want our first contact with stuff to start by some instant gratification.

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pettazz
This guy seems to be missing the _entire_ point of Circles. So you can
determine what stuff you post goes out to what people. If I post a link that I
don't want my mom to see, I won't include the Family circle in it. That's a
pretty high return for me.

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garry
I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to use a private family group for this. If my mom
wants to post something to the group, I will have already created it and she
won't have to re-make the circle.

Can you even imagine having your mom make circles?

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51Cards
My Mom has already made circles and found the drag and drop feature to be dead
easy. She loves it.

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garry
You're right, the Google drag-and-drop thing works pretty well and is quite
innovative. That's certainly a direct way for them to mitigate the circle-
creation problem. Arguably that's actually a critical piece of making Google+
work even though Circles is an n^2 operation.

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Terretta
EDIT: Derp, I'd read "n^2" as "n^n" both in a comment above and here, and even
typed "n^2" while thinking it said "n^n". Sorry, garry.

\---

Even if you're making a circle for every person, and putting every person in
every circle, it's not n^n, it's just n * n.

    
    
      75×75 = 5,625
      75^75 = 4.26 × 10^140
    

But I don't see why you'd make a circle for every person, when you can add
arbitrary individuals to Post or Share permissions.

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agscala
n^2 is the same as n*n.

~~~
btilly
Except that in many programming languages, ^ means xor, so they do very
different things. As a result in programming discussions I use n __2 instead
of n^2 to avoid the possibility of confusion if someone tries to cut and paste
formulas into code.

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cbs
I understand the criticism and while G+ may be able to benefit from something
like public circles, I think the post misses the core concept that circles are
_my_ cataloging of the people I know. Nobody else has shares or even
understands the weight of edges on my social graph. It looks like google's
goal is to give user's ownership over their circles rather than making them a
shared resource, it gives the user ultimate control over who sees what they
post.

A shared group relies on the assumption that all the members' social
connections create the same graph such that that group X is good for their
collective Xing purposes. Other than tight-nit cliques that doesn't work well.
Even then, once one person wants a "group X minus Y" or another wants "group X
plus Z" the utility of the group is severely diminished.

Shared control also has downsides, for example I don't need people who have
access to my drunk pictures able to add people to the drunk picture viewer's
list. While there are ways of sharing the pictures out-of-band that is a risk
and different than the self-censoring that could follow an unwelcome addition
to a circle.

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kidmenot
Me, I really love this "Circles" feature. How I organize my contacts is (and
should be) entirely up to me.

Others can't see my groups? It can't get any better than that, and I really
mean it.

But hey, of course I might be wrong.

~~~
brianb722
Exactly. I don't want the people I was forced to add out of workplace social
norms to know they're in a "Work - Others" group that gets to hardly see
anything I do.

These are MY social circles, why should they have to be relevant to anyone
other than me.

~~~
docgnome
You know, it didn't dawn on me until just now where the name circles come
from.

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stevenleeg
I think it's wrong for the author to compare the functionality of G+ circles
with Facebook's group feature, as the two are not the same. Circles are more
directly comparable with Facebook's "lists" feature, which can also be said to
have a high amount of work (significantly more than G+'s circles, in my
opinion) for a low amount of "return".

~~~
garry
Nobody uses Facebook lists. That's the main reason I didn't bother mentioning
it.

~~~
seabee
Perhaps your next post should argue that Facebook's one-to-one video calling
is a better mode of communication than Google+ group text discussion (or vice
versa).

You would even have strengthened your argument if you noted how Facebook lists
were underused compared to Groups, and extrapolate it to Circles.

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kuahyeow
Google circles was based on that real social network paper by Paul Adams. In
the real world, there aren't 1000 "friends" to categorise. The oft-quoted
figure of 150 friends come to mind. Not really high work to move 150 friends.
It matches your mental model so well, that it's hard _not_ to move people into
groups

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InclinedPlane
Exactly. You have family and very close friends who might as well be family,
but beyond that you typically have groups of friends in some particular
context. Friends through work, friends from school, friends through a
particular hobby, professional acquintances, etc, etc. Often times it's not
appropriate to dump all of these people into one big bucket, to imagine that
the level of intimacy you share with a friend you would donate an organ to and
some one you like to spend time with at work should be even remotely the same.
As social networking sites become mature it's critical that they engage the
full spectrum of communication, not merely the lowest common denominator
that's suitable or meaningful to all of your extended acquintances.

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aarlo
Low social return. High personal return.

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msluyter
The author doesn't seem to be taking into account the fact that the "work"
involved is front-loaded at the moment, because everyone's joining G+
simultaneously. Once a certain equilibrium is reached, our circles won't
change that rapidly over time and the work will (should?) be minimal.

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phamilton
I think the big picture people are missing is that the average facebook and
twitter user has put so many hours into their account. Adding friends.
Following people. It's been a cumulative process over the last 5 years. Trying
to cram that into a week is clearly going to seem overwhelming. What is most
impressive is that many (myself included) find Google+ and Circles to be quite
friction free.

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mdesq
Circles seems like the Google+ equivalent of labels in Gmail or tags in
Reader. You can easily tag a thread or user with one or more descriptive
labels. I don't find that a lot of work. Facebook, in comparison (last time I
checked), makes you go to the group to add/remove people. Major pain to manage
groups in FB.

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al-king
I don't think he gets what makes Circles good. Their privacy and asymmetry is
exactly why I like them. You don't want other people knowing 'how you
classify' them, and it doesn't matter to them, really, unless they're being
neurotic. Circles is an unobtrusive way to show the people you want precisely
the things you want them to see; this would become an awkward tug-of-war if
they had to agree on what you did.

EDIT: After a little consideration, being able to designate Circles as public
does seem reasonable, though. I follow games industry, comics, and Uni club
people and have them in groups saying as much. I'd feel perfectly comfortable
publishing those for people who're interested, and would like to find those
people.

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RexRollman
In my opinion, social networking has always been low return, regardless of
where it occurs.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Obviously your frame of reference is for a very limited use case. Three
examples of social networking working in the last couple weeks (just from my
limited perspective):

1\. My mom rediscovering someone she hadn't seen in over 20 years through
Facebook. 2\. Two musicians chatting on each others' music profiles and
figuring out how to collaborate on music online. 3\. An engineering student
from Africa reaching out to me to comment on his project.

Given Garry Tan's work at Posterous, there is some vested interest in the
space, but at the same time I don't think his claims are any less valid. I
haven't tried Google+ yet, so I don't know if I agree or not.

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smazero
Minor nitpick, but I'm not also not sure I buy the argument that a group that
any member can add other members to, automatically and always gets better over
time. I don't have any data one way or another, but it seems entirely
plausible to me that a group could morph and change with new additions until
it becomes something you don't want to be a member of any more.

But basically this comes down to what other people have already noted: Google+
Circles != Facebook Groups

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pnathan
I dunno, I was able to follow some leaders in tech with only a few clicks and
taps on the keyboard.

/not a social media power user.

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brown9-2
There's a simple fix to this, isn't there? Add a user option to define a
default group to place new contacts into.

I think a part of the perceived "high work" is treating what G+ would like you
to think of as "your friends" as "random people I want to follow" a la
Twitter.

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jgalvez
I'm getting tired of self-righteous posts about how the way Circles works is a
problem. It might be a problem for you, but it might be a feature for others.
It's exactly what I want, to be honest. If that doesn't work for you, stick to
Facebook and Twitter.

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jiaaro
this is wrong... for many people, this is fun and worth while in it's own
right. Organizing your friends into groups could be a facebook app (so in
otherwords, people would do it without any other reason than just to do it and
maybe share it)

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Joakal
I haven't got a G+ account, but is G+ circle grouped friends data exportable?

It seems like a form of technical debt otherwise as n of friends approach
infinity.

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stretchwithme
To help others discover new people, Google could simply allow you to make some
of your lists public.

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ignifero
I agree with that and think they need to implement an obvious extension:
shared circles.

~~~
ceejayoz
Nested circles would be nice, too. I'd like to be able to have an "everyone"
circle, put "acquaintances" in it, and put "work" in "acquaintances".

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Florin_Andrei
There is already an "everyone" circle, it's called public post.

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nostrademons
There's a difference between "everyone" and "public". Everyone includes every
person you've added to a circle - it's equivalent to "friends only" on
LiveJournal. Public is that _plus_ anyone who happens to run across your
Google+ profile, which is publicly accessible on the Internet.

I find I share to "All your circles" a lot more than I share to "Public",
because I like knowing who's reading my stuff.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I stand (belatedly) corrected.

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Hisoka
Forget Circles. It's all about showcasing our narcissism and ego. Where can
people see our long friend list? Where can they see our favorite quotations?
Our favorite movies? Our huge photo album collection with all our social
events and vacations? Where can they see our "Notes"? Where can they see the
witty comments we've made on other status messages?

