Now that the velvet rope around Google+ has fallen, hoi-polloi like myself can join. Apparently the ability to partition one’s acquaintances into various sets, i.e. circles, is a big part of the appeal. There are the obvious ones like `family’ and `friends’. One can also create new circles. An implicit assumption is that the labels of circles are `positive’. I toyed with other labels.
Carbuncle
Mass Murderer
Waste of Space
Finally settled on `Educated Beyond Their Intelligence’. I added an individual, X, I have not met and am unlikely to do so that I thought unambiguously fit the definition and would, if called upon, be able to defend such a choice and waited to see what happened. It turns out that Google does not read the labels of the circles in the sense of understanding them. It has dutifully informed X that I have included him/her in a circle. I receive happy missives from X. Thus, the real benefit of Google+. One can now appear to be nice to people who one does not care for on-line rather than just in real life.
3 comments
August 2, 2011 at 9:54 am
Sambhav Karnawat
Dr. Vohra
Doesn’t a similar functionality exist in facebook already, by the name of lists? You can create friend lists & post to them & even see posts from just the lists you want to.
August 2, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Anonymous
You got me. Never ventured onto facebook. Those on Google+ I asked that also had facebook pages claimed either that feature was not available or hard to use on facebook.
August 3, 2011 at 12:57 am
Sambhav Karnawat
The thing is, facebook introduced that feature just about a year back. By then most people already had hundreds of friends, & nobody has the time (or the will) to sit down & put them into categories, whereas on Google+, you have to do that by default!
P.S. : You should try out facebook, its a good service! haha