| I don't think they have copied Diaspora's model. If you try to solve group communication problems, you by definition need to create some model of groups, be it Circles, Diaspora aspects, Facebook groups, IRC channels, email recipient lists, whatever. Because both Diaspora and Google+ are clearly inspired by semi-public sharing model of Facebook, it's quite natural that their group model will resemble each other, even be almost identical. If, on the otherhand, a service is focused around group conversation instead of sharing, it's group model might be one where groups are shared among participants, instead of being private aliases. However, what's much more interesting to me is how a service tries to bootstrap "the group management". In the beginning you don't have Circles and you don't have strong incentive to group people to Circles when you don't know are you going to use the service and how are you going to use it. Google clearly tried to make it more enjoyable by providing fun visual UI. But it still feels a chore, because benefits are unclear. I would have emphasized it differently: start from a sharing experience instead of group management. Use email-like recipient list as the basic model and introduce the fun way to make group aliases after you have shared a few items. It's more utilitarian model, which doesn't have as strong virality factor as Google's approach. In Google+ you get something akin to invite when somebody adds you to his Circle. |