How circles can work for you
CIRCLE GETS THE SQUARE
Google+ recognises that you have different social circles, and behave, interact and share things with them all differently. So they’ve created Circles as a way of managing this. Your contacts, be they family, friend, acquaintance, workmate, all the way “stranger that you want to keep at arms-length” can all be placed in the Circle (or Circles) that best deals with the level of the interaction that you want to have with them.
THE SPIRIT OF SHARING
This is not a unique concept. In fact, it’s how we deal with people every day. Google+ just makes it very easy to organise our contacts in this way. Simply click and drag a contact into the Circle or Circles that best describe how they fit into your life. When you add new content (comments, photos, in-depth rants, clever stories, pictures of cats with amusing captions, links to red-headed 80’s one-hit-wonders), you set the circles that you want to have access to that content.
POLITICAL MINEFIELD
SEE IT FROM THEIR VIEWPOINT
Going hand-in-hand with Circles is the ability to view your profile as any of your contacts would see it. At a glance, you can know exactly how much of your content is on display to a particular contact, or publicly. Using Circles allows you to develop what amounts to an online profile for each level of contacts, and easily manage and maintain that profile, all from the one location.
Click here to find related articles and learn more about Google+.
30 AUGUST 11
Part of what makes Google+ stand out from the competition is the clever way that the privacy settings work. On other social networking sites, the setting of your privacy levels can be a frustrating task, and even once you’ve set them, they only apply to people that aren’t your “friend” yet. Once you’ve “friended” someone, they can see any content that you post or upload.
In theory, this is the way that you would expect to deal with a “friend” – open and honest. In reality, we all have different levels of friendship. From your very closest friends, to the old school acquaintance, to work colleagues, all the way to someone that you just met while out and about. Because of these different levels of social interaction, you may not want everyone to know everything about you.
Grandma doesn’t need to know the details of that huge Saturday night after the rugby. You don’t want your boss to know that you’re fed up with work and need a pick-me-up. And you don’t want that person that you met last week to know the nicknames that you used to have in high school.
CIRCLE GETS THE SQUARE
Google+ recognises that you have different social circles, and behave, interact and share things with them all differently. So they’ve created Circles as a way of managing this. Your contacts, be they family, friend, acquaintance, workmate, all the way “stranger that you want to keep at arms-length” can all be placed in the Circle (or Circles) that best deals with the level of the interaction that you want to have with them.
THE SPIRIT OF SHARING
This is not a unique concept. In fact, it’s how we deal with people every day. Google+ just makes it very easy to organise our contacts in this way. Simply click and drag a contact into the Circle or Circles that best describe how they fit into your life. When you add new content (comments, photos, in-depth rants, clever stories, pictures of cats with amusing captions, links to red-headed 80’s one-hit-wonders), you set the circles that you want to have access to that content.
POLITICAL MINEFIELD
The Circles that you place your contacts into are entirely at your discretion, and none of your contacts are privy to what Circles that you’ve placed them into.
Again, this sets Google+ apart from their competition. The politics involved with “friending” and “un-friending” people may be tricky at times. Although the act of “un-friending” someone isn’t made public (in that you aren’t expressly notified when someone no longer wishes to give you access to their content), it can still have quite a socially profound meaning. With Google+, you can simply move someone to one of the outer-circles of your social group.
SEE IT FROM THEIR VIEWPOINT
Going hand-in-hand with Circles is the ability to view your profile as any of your contacts would see it. At a glance, you can know exactly how much of your content is on display to a particular contact, or publicly. Using Circles allows you to develop what amounts to an online profile for each level of contacts, and easily manage and maintain that profile, all from the one location.
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME?
Using Circles, you really get the feeling that Google+ was built around its privacy settings, and not just had privacy thrown in as an afterthought (even down to the fact that if you shut your Google+ account down, Google does not retain or hold any rights over any of the content that you’ve posted). They have made Circles and the features that work with them intuitive to use, without being obtrusive. At the end of the day, what users want in their social networking is to be social, but it’s refreshing to be able to filter content too.
Using Circles, you really get the feeling that Google+ was built around its privacy settings, and not just had privacy thrown in as an afterthought (even down to the fact that if you shut your Google+ account down, Google does not retain or hold any rights over any of the content that you’ve posted). They have made Circles and the features that work with them intuitive to use, without being obtrusive. At the end of the day, what users want in their social networking is to be social, but it’s refreshing to be able to filter content too.
Essentially, Google+ has created an elegant solution to sharing content, while giving users full control of their privacy levels. They have made it exceptionally user-friendly, exceptionally robust and it’s been made to mimic the way that we, as humans, think about social situations.
This could be the first real competition that Facebook has seen. Watch this space...
This could be the first real competition that Facebook has seen. Watch this space...
Click here to find related articles and learn more about Google+.
