My Circles as they currently stand
OK, perhaps my circles are getting a little more complicated now, but it is work in progress.
The standard circles, Friends, family, Acquaintances & following all are pretty obvious.
Following Circle
You may think I have gone mad in having over 3000 people in my following circle. Basically that’s everyone I follow (including those in other circles). My idea is to follow most people that could be interesting, and over the next month or so this circle will be pruned down, or organised so that I move or copy people over to the other circles. It also helps me build up more followers
Shhh
I’m not using this at the moment, but this is a circle of people who are being a bit too noisy but I don’t want to unfollow quite yet. I had this recommendation from another G+ user, but I honestly can’t remember who it was (sorry!). A good idea, but I’ll see if I need to implement it.
Geeks, Cool Geeks, Local Geeks & Google etc
I’m a bit of a geek (amongst other things), so I like to organise other geeky people I follow. A lot of the people I follow are fellow geeks, so the Geeks circle is going to get pretty big. To sort this out, I have created a cool geeks circle where I add the geeks I am really interested in. I also have a google circle for anyone who works at or for Google. This is helpful when learning about new G+ features or ideas. Finally have a local geeks circle for geeks who live near by. Local is still important despite the internet being worldwide.
Drafts
Not had to use this yet, but if I am in the middle of a post and need to rush off somewhere, I can just add this to my drafts circle. There is no one in it, and doesn’t need to be. I’ll just be able to edit the post later and then add some circles to it.
Cool Posts
I got so fed up with searching for those cool posts I saw earlier in the day that I decided to create a cool posts circle. This way I can share a cool post to the cool post circle and I’ll always be able to find it. Yes, I can bookmark it using Delicious or Pinboard, but this is a good way to do it from within G+.
Interest Circles
The other circles I have (_musicians_, politics, web developers, SEO etc) are for particular interests I have. I put in anyone who may be interested in that subject and I’ll be able to post posts that are relevant to them.
A Problem: Can’t Exclude Circles
My only concern is, that ideally I’d want most posts to be public as well, but there is no way to exclude circles. When chatting with a friend and fellow GooglePluser (is that a word?), Anthony Holmes, he pointed out this problem. Many of us will want to post publically on different subjects but not want to alienate our friends or family circles. For example if all my public posts are geek-related, then many of my friends aren’t going to be that interested. Likewise, if I chat about other subjects such as politics, faith, food, it would be good if I could post these to people who are interested. Of course, they could still see the posts by checking the posts whilst not logged in, but it’s more about being relevant to friends than blocking posts from them.
Perhaps tagging is the way forwards here. There is no built in method of tagging, but one way if to do it Twitter hashtag style by putting the tags with a “#” sign at the top. Both Vincent Mo and Chris Messina have mentioned this in a few posts:
https://plus.google.com/116594199576805510790/posts/2nGMuWQpsKJ
https://plus.google.com/102034052532213921839/posts/3WXXq6x6yJi
So, maybe this is the way forwards?
