I've been using Google+ a lot the last few days, and I like it--especially the circles idea that lets me put people I might want to address into specific groups.
Circles are a lot more nuanced than the all-or-nothing broadcast technology I'm used to with Facebook and Twitter. But unless Google figures a way to fix one particular shortcoming, circles don't fix a problem I've had for years: the social networking tension between personal and professional use.
Here it is, in brief: I want to offer public commentary on the tech world through Google+, but I don't want my ceaseless techno-talk to clog friends' and family's Google+ streams.
It was for this reason that last year I unplugged my Twitter stream from Facebook and this year set up my separate professional Facebook page.
I'm willing to cut Google, Twitter, and everybody else with an online service some slack here. It's genuinely hard to create a product that can withstand the duality of people's different roles. Most of us have grown accustomed to having separate home and work e-mail addresses, for example. Facebook offers an ability to run linked personal and professional personas.
One obvious solution to this plight involves the Venn diagram approach to circles--a thought that's occurred to me and several others. Simon Phipps would like nested circles, so he could have a group that's a subset of another.
The post would still be visible on the Web; Google's servers would just subtract one circle during the distribution process. A complication arises when a person is in two conflicting circles, one to which I'm distributing content and one from which I'm excluding content; in that case perhaps it would be best to distribute it.
Posts
