[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.