Have you noticed that all social features being most praised on Google’s new G+ are all social features to help us be, well, less social? Or at least more selectively social.
Google’s circles, I’m constantly told, allow you to share content with different groups. You can skip the updates who bore you! You can make an unread circle of people you’d feel guilty unfriending, and they’ll never know that they’re in the Guilt Circle!
But… Facebook’s already offered filters with the same functionality for posting and reading. Facebook users can already take people off their feed and still maintain Facebook friendship with them. And, just like in the Google+ Guilt Circle, they’ll never know about it, so your uncle’s political links can go totally unread without any unfriending awkwardness at Thanksgiving dinner. Facebook users can already lock what you post to select groups of friends, allowing you to post your snarky work-hating updates on a colleague-free list, or protect your epic bar photos from your mom. So that’s hardly innovative for G+.
I simply don’t see any functionality praised in a Google circle that isn’t already offered by other social networks. Lest I come off like a Facebook fangirl, I’ll point out that proto-blogsite LiveJournal offered filtered lists 10 years ago.
Most of us realize that Facebook’s unstated policy is to do things first and ask permission later. (And that alone is a pretty valid reason to quit the ‘book.) Facebook and third-party apps have not been very transparent about what parts of your profile would be shared, what would appear on your wall, and how you would be contacted (read: spammed) when you utilized different apps.
G+, so far, has been extra clear about how your information is available. Users have the ability to re-share locked or circled posts, after a reminder than that original information was not for public consumption. So, you can share a contact’s update with your relevant circle, with just a few clicks. Users can, of course, make a frenemy’s private info public, but the extra clarity in the Google+ UI makes this an act of malice, and not a quickclicking goof.
Google’s transparency in the usage of circles does change the site’s social interactions. The G+ user’s default action is adding new contacts to selected circles, instead of dumping new contacts into a catchall, two-way friends list (although… you can build a catchall Friends circle quite easily). The ability to build and modify circles puts more of the responsibility of selection on the reader. As a poster, users can decide whether to share content with everyone who stops by or with one or more circles of friends. So you’re able to post industry news with commentary for your work connections without answering a hundred questions from your family members, or without risking boring your crush with yet another treatise on the state of independent iOS games. (Er. Your mileage my vary.) This makes one’s newsfeed much more relevant.
But that isn’t entirely a function of Google+ or Facebook’s UI. Facebook has simply been around longer, making us more likely to have have college hallmates or old coworkers on our ‘booklists. G+ has only the the people you chose to add over the last few weeks, only people who’ve come to your social consciousness recently, so G+ is pretty much free of that the awkward feeling when a FB acquaintance has forgotten you’re reading and posts something clearly not meant for you.
I expect G+ to become more useful and more popular as more apps and sites connect to it. Once we can share links with a G+ button as commonly as a Facebook Like button, there will be more traffic on G+. As that happens, there will be more friend fluff, and also be spammers jumping on the G+ awesome, and third-party apps designed for maximum virality (read: spam). Google’s real name policy adds extra incentive for clever scammers.
There’s a lot to enjoy about Google+. But the ability to make a People I’m Pretending To Follow circle and a People Who Post Too Bloody Much And Need To Be Moderated circle is hardly ground-breaking innovation.
