[cronz]

The idea of circles sounds fantastic on paper but it's simply too much work for the common user.

For most of the posts users would make, users would probably spend more time thinking about which circles to enable than actually writing the post. It's a headache and it leads to a poor experience, it feels like a hurdle, something you must do; it makes posting less natural.

Facebook on the other hand offers the same functionality but it's "buried" so you can use it at your convenience.

[coldtea]

>For most of the posts users would make, users would probably spend more time thinking about which circles to enable than actually writing the post. It's a headache and it leads to a poor experience, it feels like a hurdle, something you must do; it makes posting less natural.

How low have we got, capacity wise, when this is even considered "a hurdle"?

At one time, people had to walk to the TV to change the channels...

And before that, they had to have candles and be good with finger shadows to entertain themselves...

[frereubu]

It's because it forces you to pick. Outside of the discrete friendship groups online, there's an ever-shifting on-the-spot calculation about who's around you and how much you want to say. One day you might feel like telling friend X while you're in the coffee shop together with just one other friend, the next day you might not feel so open in the bar for a variety of reasons. Add in all the variables about who else is around, how much beer you've drunk, whether you've just been paid, if the relationship with a partner is going well etc. and every situation is different in a very nuanced way. I'm not on Facebook now, but when I was I rapidly gave up on the idea of administering my friendship groups because it felt like I was bureacratising my friendships in a very unnatural way.

[Already__Taken]

One person is all it takes to ruin it, and there's no cost for them to do so nor immediate negative consequence.

I thought g+ circles was a great idea, the reddit webdesign circle taught me I don't care about all of your kids.

[myth_buster]

> The idea of circles sounds fantastic on paper but it's simply too much work for the common user.

Google has ML based version of circle where depending on who is on the photo or whom you have added as recipient it suggests additional recipients.

To me that is a better UX.

a. They don't have to explicitly create circles.

b. If you keep adding someone new or remove someone over a period of time, the model would learn that and act accordingly.

c. If user wants to explicitly create a circle, they can probably do it as a group.

[egypturnash]

Livejournal had this long before G+ or Facebook existed, and people sure did regularly lock their posts to one group of friends or another.

The choice of how to restrict your audience was placed below the 'new post' entry box, and was something you'd usually think about after writing your post. Which was more likely to be a multi-paragraph thing than the short fragments we're so used to tossing off on all the commercial social networks now.

[robotbikes]

Sorting feeds into algorithmically informed circles would be helpful. The current algorithm is a nightmare if it is data starved, ie you get fed a bunch a irrelevant info from people you just interacted with. There is no process to say, hey Facebook show me what my old college friends are up to. Or hey Facebook show me what my family is up to or hey Facebook show me political news. It's just a bunch of random grasping at straws.

[storm14k]

I don't know why circles was so difficult for some. As soon as it launched I dropped FB because I would always get concerned about different groups of people seeing what I posted. On G+ I immediately had a Family circle, a circle of people I knew from work, close friends and then people I met on the service. In fact it didn't seem like people had a problem with the system until TechCrunch gave them talking points. The same thing happened with them integrating it across the properties and the "ramming it down our throats" flap.

[ddingus]

Same. It made instant sense.

Too bad it failed. I liked g+

[4ad]

Good grief, deciding who to communicate with is considered too hard for the common user. Better let algorithms decide it for you!

[pessimizer]

> users would probably spend more time thinking about which circles to enable than actually writing the post

I'm not sure why this is harder than choosing an email address to send an email to. Some things I'd share with FAMILY, some things I'd share with EVERYBODY, some things I'd share with MY QUILTING GROUP.

Seems like the easiest thing in the world.

Also seems weird to say that even selecting a group to share to is a massive hurdle, but the fact that facebook buries the same functionality behind 5-6 clicks for each post is convenient. Seems more like it was too easy, and had to be made harder.

[YourMatt]

Facebook's implementation is only behind two clicks. When you go to add a post, there's a drop-down to select who you want to see it. Opening the drop-down is one click. Selecting the list is the other one.

The problem is in managing the people in these lists. I haven't found a place where it shows all users I have in a single list. Adding or removing a single user is easy though, as the available lists are available for selection/deselection anywhere you're allowed to change your friend status with that person.

[microtherion]

> Some things I'd share with FAMILY, some things I'd share with EVERYBODY, some things I'd share with MY QUILTING GROUP.

But if you're truly disciplined about this, you never learn that your second cousin is interested in quilting too.

And in many scenarios, there is little reward to being disciplined; unless you're into rather transgressive quilting, you'll probably share your quilting projects with everyone.

[Double_a_92]

There is nothing stopping you from sharing things you are proud of with you family circle. But technical discussions about quilting don't need to eventually end up on a random friends feed.

[mcv]

Google+ also implemented the opposite: you share to your Quilting collection, and everybody who follows you can choose whether to follow that collection or not.

The combination of circles and collections is very powerful, though the way G+ implemented it, they do overlap a bit, and don't entirely play well together. Slightly more flexible collections would help a lot.

[tomjen3]

I can see the argument regard engagement, but honestly you probably should take at least as long to think about your intended audience as you should posting your birthday picture.

Heck I wish Facebook forced you to provide at least one tag with each post, just so that we could unfollow e.g baby posts/political posts and then maybe get something useful out of Facebook (my current solution is to unfollow the annoying person, but that is a bit too crude).

[Findeton]

You are spot on. However you have groups in Whatsapp. If somehow you could use instant message groups as "circles" for publishing posts too... that's what I intend to do in my social network btw.

[rikkus]

WhatsApp groups seem to be popular

[Arn_Thor]

Yeah, but they're not perfect. You quickly end up with groups containing mostly the same friends, but different configurations of them depending on the event and exactly who you want to include in each discussion. It's a headache, really