Nobody is a Square on Google+

Tweet

Circles are similar to lists in Facebook, however it’s much easier to add and remove people from them, simply by dragging and dropping. I gave up on lists for the most part in Facebook because I just don’t have the time to type all those names until they pop up to create one list at a time. That’s already a bygone era.

With circles, it easy to share the more personal items with just your “friends” and exclude your “acquaintances” and “followers”. When sharing, just add the circles and with the folks that you want included; it’s all right there, no learning curve required. You can also add a circle with folks not on Google+ but with Gmail accounts; they’ll get the info you’re sharing too.

Circles take seconds to create. I have six right now, but will really think through how I want to divvy things up going forward. Still haven’t decided how personal or how public I want to be, and I’m still waiting to see how Google+ will treat businesses.  Obviously in Facebook, there are advantages to having a page for your business vs. a personal profile (see my recent post on that), but Google+ may go an entirely different route. Who knows?

Creating new circles is simple and you can even change the names of the four given to you at the start. In one article I recently read, there was mention of a circle named “people I hate”…why anyone would have people who fit THAT category in a circle is beyond me, but to each his own. But the point here is you get to name them whatever you want…

…and no one knows what you’ve named your circles, nor do they know which circle they’ve been placed in. So I may think Joe is an acquaintance and he might consider me a friend. But neither of us will ever know how we’ve been categorized. Unless Google+ decides to add an option to make circle names and who is in them public at some point.

And, you may add people to as many of your circles as you like, again, simply by dropping and dragging them again and again. And again, I have to stress that Google+ is light years ahead of Facebook here.

My big question is: Regarding circles, I’d like to know why on my profile there are fewer people who have added me to their circles compared to the higher number on my circles page.  Apparently there is a delay of sorts; a long delay. My initial observation tells me that the lag time can be half a day or more. What’s up with that? Shouldn’t it be “instant” much like follows on Twitter or friending on Facebook? Still curious about this one, but it’s certainly something I can live with.

On a rating scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the highest and 1 the lowest, I’m giving circles a 9. Sorry, but I’m a hard rater! I suspect many of you will go ahead and give that 10.