[peterzakin]

Begs the question: are circles valuable?

I think that people are actually taking the time to organize their circles. You almost have to be a google+ anarchist to not organize your circles. But are people actually using circles?

The only time that I use circles is when i want to filter my stream, which is useful, though not reason to call google+ a game changer. Now, what will be interesting to see is how i will use circles when i start uploading photos to google+. If i only share with the few people i'm putting in my friends circle, that could be damaging to facebook. That could be a game-changer.

Also, fwiw, I'm using Google+ publicly right now, kind of like a long-form twitter.

[wisty]

I'd say so, as they allow a lot more styles of engagement.

Want to use google+ as twitter? Use circles. Tweet out to the 1,000 people in your "tech enthusiast" circle.

Want to share photos with close friends? Use circles.

Google+ can be lots of things to lots of different people, without spoiling it for everything. But then, I'm an optimist. Maybe it will all be a wash. Who knows?

[megaman821]

If you have a 1,000 people in your tech enthusiast circle, you put them there. That is a lot of work compared to people putting themselves there. A lot of the famous people on Google+ with thousands of followers post everything publicly, not even using circles.

[sanderjd]

Special semantics for the "Following" circle might be nice, where anyone you put into that circle has a "Following You" circle that you are part of. Unfortunately, I think this is probably hard to do in a manner that does not add complexity and confusion to the existing implementation. It would make sense to people from the Twitter world, but breaks the implicit assumption that your circles are private.

[Angostura]

Surely the equivalent of the broadcast Twitter is simply to send it to the 'Public' "circle", all your other circles will see that turn up in their streams.

[theBobMcCormick]

I'll certainly use circles if enough of my friends, family, coworkers, etc. start using Google+.

If Facebook had that feature, I'd be using it frequently to post geeky technical stuff to my work friends without boring my non-tech relatives, posting pictures of my kids to my relatives and close friends without boring my work friends, posting politically charged stuff to only those friends I know are on the same side of the political fence, and posting about my side business without my boss and my coworkers being able to read it! :-)

As it stands now though, most of the people I know are on Facebook, relatively few are on Google+ (yet at least), and I just end up occasionally posting fairly bland, watered down stuff that's unlikely to bother anyone, etc.

[sanderjd]

Hmm, I guess neither of us have anything besides anecdote, but here's the data for the entirety of my stream so far (includes me and people that are in my circles):

Limited - 63% Public - 33% Extended Circles - 4% Total - 55 posts

So, small sample for sure, and skewed by early adopters who are almost certainly interested in G+ because they have always hated the fire-hose of FB (disclosure: this is why I'm interested in it). I'm also only following about 5 people who could be considered public figures at the moment, and the overwhelming majority of those public posts come from Randall Munroe. So, take it or leave it, but for the time being, and at least for the people I know who are active on the service, I think limiting posts to certain circles or individuals is the preferred sharing method.

As a further (small) data point, I've had a few people share photo albums with me, and none of them have done so publicly. Photos are definitely the major pain point of the oh-my-god-Grandma-can-see-this problem, but so are things like bad language, dirty jokes, non- or anti-religious articles, or politics in general, so seeing those things shared in a limited fashion could also be a game changer. I have already noticed an enormous difference in my own behavior - with Facebook, I dreaded the day my parents joined, and stopped using it basically as soon as they did, but with G+, I have already invited them because there is nothing to fear.

Circles are absolutely valuable, but perhaps they won't be valuable enough to enough people.

[jfoutz]

I'm the kind of nerd that still plays pen and paper dnd. I play on a minecraft server. I'm in a lisp usergroup. The groups have nothing in common, and nothing to do with real life. I've found circles handy.

[esrauch]

I think the complaint is that you don't actually care whether someone from your lisp usergroup actively wanted to see your minecraft posts. For security its the publisher who wants categorization of others, but for avoiding categorical issues it is really the consumer who wants to be deciding what they want to see.

[jfoutz]

After thinking about it for a while, i think this subscriber chooses pushes you back into the undershareing problem. Since there's no way for me to tag intentions of posts, there is no way for subscribers to filter out me prattling on about minecraft.

Furthermore, if they have to go through all that effort to set up circles and then filters based on content, why not just unsubscribe?

I understand it feels like you want to see everything from everyone, but then i'm not going to say anything, because my messages must be carefully crafted for a broad audience. The more I can narrow the communication targets, the more information i can cram in a message with jargon, acronyms, and silly examples in groups of three.