[aloneinkyoto]

Facebook Places is the feature I've been using the most on Facebook since it was introduced. And I can probably say the same thing about the rest of my circle of friends. It is very sad if they are intentionally going to limit such an awesome and well designed feature (way, way better than anything Foursquare, Gowalla or Twitter offers). Especially if they are going to require you to attach a status message or photo to every check in. Most check ins I do is simply to passively tell my friends where I am to coordinate social gatherings in an informal way without having to attach any greater meaning or social significance to the fact. I'm sharing my location. I might not necessarily be interested in sharing anything more than that.

It's a bit like saying: "Oh, by the way. I might be hanging out down at the bar tonight. Swing by if you feel like it". Without actually having to say it out loud.

edit: The more I think about this, the more angry I get. It feels like the Google+ nerd mafia is slowly destroying Facebook through bad influence. They simply don't understand how and why Facebook works and is popular. The whole privacy and circles stuff for example, which is just stupid. No normal person cares about that. Facebook is a tool for sharing and connecting and to limit that in the name of privacy is insanely counterproductive. It only adds a wet blanket of politics on something that is better understood through social psychology and sociology. Facebook used to understand that, but now it seems they've started to become distracted. Sad really.

[nbm]

You can still get the exact same check-in behaviour with the new system - just don't put a status message or photo, and give your location. It looks identical to how a check-in looks now.

You can also now do this from your computer (not just your smartphone), and do it just before you go to, or just after you return from your venue, not just while you're there.

[aloneinkyoto]

That's great! My concerns seems to have been unfounded then.

The jury is still out on the new privacy stuff though.

[tejaswiy]

Wow, really? Google+ is an incredibly well designed tool, done by people actually working in psychology, sociology etc. rather than Facebook's geek centric culture of push updates now, worry about consequences later. If anything, what Facebook has been doing was to progressively push people trade off privacy for convinience and while they whine and complain about it for a while, they get used to it.

I'm not saying plus will win the social wars because Facebook has a lot of people because it built up a lot of momentum. But if it looses it won't be because people found it too nerdy / geeky or whatever. It just means Facebook had a huge advantage and they didn't let it slip.

[aloneinkyoto]

The macro difference in philosophy between Facebook and Google+ is that Google+ encourages social silos and obscurity (typical characteristics of geek/hacker culture, inherited from American liberalism and Californian utopism), while Facebook on the other hand encourages emphasis on context and sharing (in the two way interactive sense, not the one way broadcasting sense that for example Twitter promotes).

[mindstab]

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/why-im-n...

Except for the massive issues surrounding name use and the triviality in which it can be used to grief other people and not just on Google+ but their entire google account.

[Gustomaximus]

I like the circles concept. It is not about privacy, it is that my family wants to see endless photos of my child while my friends don't. IMO is more about courtesy than privacy/politics.

[aloneinkyoto]

But that is exactly what is counterproductive about it. Because it forces you to make assumptions about the people you interact with. Have you asked all of your friends wether or not they might find your family photos interesting or not? Do you think there is no value in being exposed to things that is beyond your comfort zone? I might be a 25 year old party animal that doesn't care shit about family life. But seeing the odd family photo or two in my feed now and then might perhaps be good for me? And I might even enjoy it, even if I don't want to readily admit it to my self. There is also the dimension of making the social realm more "democratic". In the sense that it is a good thing if people are not intentionally excluded from social contexts. It helps create a more tolerant society and more robust and flexible social networks if the interaction in the networks are less clustered (something a hacker, with knowledge about how the internet works should be able to appreciate).

The somewhat technical explanation is that what Google is doing is implementing something very similar to "Social role theory" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_Theory), which emphasizes social roles as the defining characteristic used to understand social interaction. While Facebook rather is implementing something more akin to "Symbolic interaction theory" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_interaction).

[torkins]

how about just making it so people can share what they want with who they want, without difficulty? I don't want my software to preach to me about how to democratize my social whatsit, I just want to find a replacement for emailing pictures out to a list of people (notice how GMail wouldn't force me to email the pictures to everyone I know).

[aloneinkyoto]

But you are profoundly fooling yourself if you believe that that is what Facebook is. If all you want to do is CC a list of people some photos, there are way better tools out there.

I think it's pretty obvious that Facebook has been, from the start, something very different. It is so ingrained in every little design decision and how they promote and talk about the service that it is a tool for managing your public persona. Not a simple communication tool, or replacement for email. Though they obviously offer that kind of functionality as well through Messages and Chat.

Facebook wants to enhance or maybe even change the way you interact socially. It's not a political agenda, but it is definitly a very conscious mission to change a large part of western culture.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about this. So let me state it again to make it clear:

FACEBOOK IS A TOOL FOR MANAGING YOUR PUBLIC PERSONA.

[Goronmon]

But you are profoundly fooling yourself if you believe that that is what Facebook is. If all you want to do is CC a list of people some photos, there are way better tools out there.

You are profoundly fooling yourself if you think that most Facebook users aren't using it as a way to CC a list of people some photos. I don't know anyone outside of the tech/blog scene who uses Facebook to manage a public persona. It's just a different way to communicate with people.

[beagle3]

You are profoundly naive if you believe that is what Facebook is for.

FACEBOOK IS A TOOL TO MAKE YOU (the user, their product) MORE MARKETABLE TO ADVERTISERS (the customers).

By knowing everything about you, they can get better rates from advertisers. Everything else, like photo sharing, and the ability to send messages to other people, or check into place, is designed to get more info about you, and to make sure you don't wander off Facebook to their competitors (if you didn't have picture sharing, you'd be using Picasa or Flicker more -- and that might threaten facebook).

[aloneinkyoto]

I was talking about Facebook the tool, i.e. how it is actually being used by people. Not Facebook the business model, which I agree with you is exactly as you describe, but is something completely different and separate from how it is perceived and used by ordinary people.

[trafficlight]

But it's about you, not about everyone else. You can choose what to share and whom to share it with. Any of your "friends" won't know the difference, or care for that matter.

[ThomPete]

I actually tend to agree here.

Although I think google+ is a welcome player on the market what really frustrates me is that I am forced to add people to some circle.

Why forced?

The same reason LinkedIn "Completion Bar" is effective.

It taxes on your cognitive energy to see people not applied to a specific circle.

Twitters work much better where people just can follow me.

[bennesvig]

Facebook Places way better than Foursquare? How?

No tips, no explore, No trending, No badges (worthless, but fun), and less specials than Foursquare.

[al_james]

Better because it allows you to simply share your location with your friends without all the rubbish foursquare adds. I know the places I want to go and I am not interested in earning a 'badge' to go there. I just want to let my friends know where I am!

[dagw]

It seems that many people consider Facebook Places way better than Foursquare specifically due to "No tips, no explore, No trending, No badges (worthless, but fun), and less specials than Foursquare"

[Otto42]

At the same time, virtually everybody I know who has tried Places has said the exact opposite.

To be fair, I have many friends who use Foursquare for its most obvious and intended purpose, which is to arrange spontaneous meetups without having to text all their friends where they are or to find out where everybody is going. I do it myself, I just pop open 4sq on the phone and see "oh, everybody is at Foo's Bar" and then go there. Easy. Facebook Places makes that simple action incredibly difficult and slow.

Places essentially fails as well because it broadens the userbase too much. My college friends whom I no longer live near couldn't care less what bar I'm at. My local friends who I'm friends with on 4sq do care. So there's a natural separation. I'm only 4sq friends with people I'm likely to see often. I'm Facebook friends with almost everybody I've ever known.

Location as meta is a good thing for Facebook. Location as check-in doesn't fit with Facebook's friend model.

[zackattack]

MZBS