Monday, July 11, 2011

Why Google Circles Will Succeed


Google's Google+ might succeed, in part, for reasons that have nothing to do with features. Google has created the opportunity for people to get a social network "do over."

Where on Facebook a user has to "de-friend" a contact, something people might be reluctant to do, Google+ handles such actions gracefully.
Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn, or most other social networks, there's no such thing as a "friend request," in one sense.  


Users can create groups of friends, called Circles, including both other Google+ users and nonusers who receive status updates by e-mail rather than from the site. But that's not the key feature.



As a Google+ user, you never are in the awkward situation of receiving a friend request from someone you don't really want to be Google+ friends with.

Nor will you have to face the awkward decision of whether or not to de-friend a former contact. Just remove them from your circles, which are never revealed to other users. Other than that, Google+ looks and behaves a lot like Facebook.

Read more.

1 comment:

Aswath said...

I may not receive a friend request, but I get notified of that. If I don't add the new person to my Circles, the person would know because when the person visits my Profile page it says how many of my Circles contain that person.

The Roots of our Discontent

Political disagreements these days seem particularly intractable for all sorts of reasons, but among them are radically conflicting ideas ab...