2011-07-05 Google Plus

Assume Alice doesn’t really like Bob and Eve and puts them into the circle of douchebags. Alice then writes a really lame post and makes it available to all douchebags. Eve can check who this message is being shared with and seeing how Bob is such a douchebag, she can now guess that Alice considers her to be in the same circle as Bob.

Am I wrong thinking that this feature is leaking information?

When I started setting up Google+, I put people in their most obvious circle: RPG, Work, Zürich, that kind of thing. When I wanted to post the above question on Google+, I didn’t know what to do. I was missing a Geek circle.

Sure, setting up more of these overlapping circles is easy to do – but the doing needs time.

​#Google Plus

Comments

(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)

I think there needs to be public circles, and to be able to put yourself in circles too. For example, if you consider yourself to be in the Linux, RPG, Geek circles then these will be suggested to others if someone wants to add you. There’s nothing to stop them putting you somewhere else, but it helps to figure out who someone is when they add you and you don’t recognise their name 😄

As regards circle publicity, I agree. You should be able to optionally restrict whether others can see who else you’re sharing with. We need BCC for circles.

All of this will come, I reckon. It’s early days for Google+.

– greywulf 2011-07-05 10:31 UTC

greywulf

---

That’s the analogy I was looking for. “BCC for circles.” 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-05 10:57 UTC

Alex Schroeder

---

Is this a douchebag post and if yes, why am I receiving it?

– lior 2011-07-05 11:01 UTC

---

Hahaha :D

– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-05 11:11 UTC

Alex Schroeder

---

BTW – I posted about Google+ on Facebook and now my Facebook account is “temporarily unavailable.”

– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-05 11:12 UTC

Alex Schroeder

---

Ich sehe Deinen FB Post über G+ noch, dieser wurde scheinbar nicht gelöscht

– Sektat 2011-07-05 14:05 UTC

---

Yup, scheint alles wieder in Ordnung zu sein.

– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-05 14:42 UTC

Alex Schroeder

---

Just post to public and let your followers decide what they like. Don’t assume I don’t like to read your RPG stuff just because I’m not an RPG player.

– Andreas Gohr 2011-07-05 20:29 UTC

Andreas Gohr

---

I guess I hesitate to do this because I have seen blog readers elsewhere complain about political stuff arguing that they had come for the gaming material, suggesting the author put up a second, dedicated blog. Similarly I had a lot of confused friends on Facebook when I piped my Twitters into Facebook. So I stopped even though I personally usually like the mix of what I came for and the random surprises.

– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-05 20:53 UTC

Alex Schroeder

---

I also need a *remove me from your circles* action – the equivalent of *unfollow* on Twitter or of *hide all status updates from this person* on Facebook. It seems like my only option is to *block* them. That’s not very fine grained...

– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-05 22:22 UTC

Alex Schroeder