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Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
71–80 of 129 posts
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#72I think a social network that has the ability for friend groups / circles is way over due. Will be interested to see this!
Yes, the name "Circles" is awesome. It's agressive and appealing when seen from the perspective of "what do you offer that's better than Facebook", but also generically pleasant if you just encountered it as a product.
As far as just the name, Etsy just released a 'follow me' type feature called 'Circles' a couple of months ago. http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/shop-together-circles-...
It's actually kind of confusing. Saying you 'circled' someone sounds odd, since it's not quite accurate. 'in your circle' vs 'in my circle' is kind of clunky compared to 'following me' or 'I follow'.
They don't offer anything related to groups of friends, though. It's a generic implementation of the usual 'following' set up.
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a feature that can be worked into Facebook in ways that will be far superior to starting a whole new social network. Google is fighting a losing battle here because they seem convinced that people want a clone of Facebook with a few extra features. And it's just not true.
Facebook does have this capability - just click the padlock next to your status. Just no-one seems to use it.
I use granular settings for messages I post to Facebook. I also use the new "private groups" on Facebook a lot.
(I just tried to show a link to the "private groups" feature on Facebook, and that proved to be very frustrating. It took me a while of thrashing around with Facebook's help feature--after first trying Google, ahem--to find the main page about Facebook groups
https://www.facebook.com/groups
to show those of you who haven't tried them before. The private groups posting interface differs in some weird ways from the usual posting interface on wall posts and private messages, as typing "Enter" instantly posts the message, and the only way to form paragraphs in text is to type Shift-Enter, which is especially confusing for Mac users.)
It will be interesting to make the comparison between a new Google offering and Facebook. Any product or service that offers social interaction has to help each user build a network among the user's friends. Buzz was a big fail that way, as most of my friends immediately decided not to use it, but perhaps something new from Google will be more successful. My friends are all smart enough to know how to bail out of the second-best network if something better than Facebook comes along.
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#74I think a social network that has the ability for friend groups / circles is way over due. Will be interested to see this!
Pretty critical thing here is to make maintaining those separate circles trouble-free. Google might have the necessary machine-learning capability to automatically put people into the right circles. If you have to start from scratch and do it all manually this won't work
One thing that could seed Google implementation of distinct friend circles is Gmail folder (label) inspection of who is on the same email lists. One of my largest and most active groups of friends is a group initially formed around common membership in an email list, an internal email list of a membership organization.
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, I'll bite. Tell me why I should use appleseed instead of using facebook.
Same reason you might want to host your own web server instead of using Geocities. And if you don't host your own, the competitive eco-system that's created by federation means you can move your profile between nodes, without losing access to your social network.
I do not understand any of what you just said.
I would want to host my own webserver instead of using Geocities because hosting my own webserver means that I can write my website in whatever language I want, and that there is no limitation on what I can use it for (like DB restrictions, or domain restrictions).
What is "the competitive ecosystem that's created by federation"? What reason would I ever have for moving my profile between "nodes"? What is a "node"?
I'm not trying to be harsh, sorry if it sounds like I am. I believe I signed up for appleseed a while ago when you linked it here, but I couldn't figure out what was special about it.
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, I'll bite. Tell me why I should use appleseed instead of using facebook.
Same reason you might want to host your own web server instead of using Geocities. And if you don't host your own, the competitive eco-system that's created by federation means you can move your profile between nodes, without losing access to your social network.
I've been hearing about Appleseed for at least 5+ years and it's still in obscurity. The problem is that it's just too complicated for the average, non-technically savvy user. Without being able to get the general public to use it, it won't go anywhere.
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#77http://twitter.com/#!/googlesxsw/status/46986827206361088
We're not launching any products at #SXSW but we're doing plenty else. Join us for #H4ckers & 80s dancing today http://goo.gl/yV4fP
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#78> We speak to our "friends" all at once, no matter what we might want to say to one group of people or another. And thus we often feel less comfortable than we might saying anything at all. I don't understand. We can do that on Facebook already. In fact, I already do that... I have friend lists, and different people see different statuses depending on context. I don't see the problem Google is trying to solve. I'd be…
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Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#79Google does not seem to own circles.com. I wonder if they are planning on using google.com/circles or maybe another alternative domain.
I usually don't like how every google product is just a subdomain or a folder of the google.com domain. Products with runaway success need to have their own domain. Can you imagine if Facebook was at microsoft.com/facebook? Or Twitter was at google.com/twitter? That would seriously slow down adoption.
gmail.com
googlemaps.com
Re: Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually don't like how every google product is just a subdomain or a folder of the google.com domain. Products with runaway success need to have their own domain. Can you imagine if Facebook was at microsoft.com/facebook? Or Twitter was at google.com/twitter? That would seriously slow down adoption.
gmail.com googlemaps.com
Those may exist, but check the URLs in Google’s global navigation.
mail.google.com/
maps.google.com/