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Hackers to follow on G+?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#31

Post by ResearchShows »

sssparkkk wrote: post #30

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family? That's right, they aren't. Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

Sounds like it's working as intended.

Facebook for friends and family, Google+ for all the tech and work stuff.

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#32

Post by wccrawford »

sssparkkk wrote: post #30

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family? That's right, they aren't. Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

Is that really a concern? For now, their friends and family can ignore any posts they don't care about, just like Facebook.

Hopefully, G+ will eventually implement tagging and people can filter out tags they don't like.

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#33

Post by sssparkkk »

wccrawford wrote: post #32
sssparkkk wrote: post #30

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family? That's right, they aren't. Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

Is that really a concern? For now, their friends and family can ignore any posts they don't care about, just like Facebook. Hopefully, G+ will eventually implement tagging and people can filter out tags they don't like.

Of course it's a concern, it's a problem circles were supposed to resolve. I for one am still barely sharing anything, because I don't want to bother people with posts that I know will not be interesting to them.

And yes, tagging would be nice as well, but I don't think one should have to explain to his/her mother to filter out their #tech and #business posts. That just won't work.

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#34

Post by jqueryin »

wccrawford wrote: post #32
sssparkkk wrote: post #30

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family? That's right, they aren't. Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

Is that really a concern? For now, their friends and family can ignore any posts they don't care about, just like Facebook. Hopefully, G+ will eventually implement tagging and people can filter out tags they don't like.

I, too, believe this is a problem. My idea of circles is to segregate them into different, private sectors. I currently face this problem on Facebook and Twitter. I tend to use Facebook for only personal friends and family whereas I use Twitter for networking and technology. Ideally I would use both of these networks for both purposes, but there is no easy way to promote separation and ensure that my messages/tweets go to the right parties.

I have no drive to create separate accounts for each social network. My personal preference would be to have different façades publicly viewable to different groups. I would treat Facebook very differently if I was given the opportunity to separate these groups and target them individually. I have a belief that Facebook tried to accomplish this with groups but fell short on exactly what I've been waning for.

As an aside, there is a Hacker News group for those of you who may not be aware.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/114326995294656?ap=1

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#35

Post by wisty »

sssparkkk wrote: post #30

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family? That's right, they aren't. Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

I've always though that personae-based would be better than circle-based. You could even have people like the former _why who have an entirely separate online presence.

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#36

Post by wccrawford »

sssparkkk wrote: post #33
wccrawford wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really a concern? For now, their friends and family can ignore any posts they don't care about, just like Facebook. Hopefully, G+ will eventually implement tagging and people can filter out tags they don't like.

Of course it's a concern, it's a problem circles were supposed to resolve. I for one am still barely sharing anything, because I don't want to bother people with posts that I know will not be interesting to them. And yes, tagging would be nice as well, but I don't think one should have to explain to his/her mother to filter out their #tech and #business posts. That just won't work.

So in other words, Circles are backwards from Twitter, and this is a problem.

I guess G+ needs a mechanism to allow people to ask to subscribe to a Circle, and the owner can approve or deny it. (Or set an option to auto-allow.)

That keeps the privacy aspect, but also makes it easy for people to follow or be followed.

If that happened, then the circles themselves would become the tags.

Another post here on HN talks about Circles not being Groups. (The Zuckerberg one.)

Reposting my comments from there:

I would definitely like to see Google add groups as pseudo-people... And then you can put that group in a Circle and share to it.

People in the group can see who else is in the group. Groups could be curated (need approval to join) or just open to anyone, and moderated (need approval to post) or not depending on the choices made by the group owner.

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#37

Post by ja27 »

Limor Fried (Adafruit): https://plus.google.com/108772200278976934119/posts

Gina Trapani (Lifehacker): https://plus.google.com/113612142759476883204/posts

Merlin Mann (43folders): https://plus.google.com/100537991844787325512/posts

Marco Arment (Instapaper): https://plus.google.com/110386126391315414323/posts

Tim Bray: https://plus.google.com/107606703558161507946/posts

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#38

Post by suhailsherif »

sssparkkk wrote: post #30

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family? That's right, they aren't. Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

The easiest way to correct this would be to allow posting to intersections, disjunctions of circles. It's gonna come for sure.

Re: Hackers to follow on G+?

#39

Post by seri »

It seems to me that the most active use for G+ at the moment is as a broadcasting system, very much like Twitter. Maybe Google has envisioned this, maybe not. I admit I didn't. I thought Google would have done whatever it takes to promote more intimate and private communication among close friend circles.

But while G+ is arguably a better broadcasting system than Twitter, it is still broken. A tech celeb would love to consistently post tech stuffs, but while this activity satisfies his geeky followers, it would annoy his friends and families. And there is no way a tech celeb can manually add his followers into different circles.

I imagine if G+ fixes this problem, it will completely replace Twitter in no time at all.

One solution is to introduce a concept called Channels.

Suppose I follow DHH. The problem is DHH has a lot of interests, ranging from Ruby, entrepreneurship, to Forbes bashing (DHH fans bear it with me here). Now DHH doesn't know who among his followers cares about which of his interests, but he creates some Channels, namely "Ruby", "Entrepreneurship", "Forbes Bashing", etc anyway, so followers can filter themselves.

Now a Rails guy found DHH's G+ page. He would like to follow DHH, but he doesn't care so much about DHH's financial insight. Now that when he adds DHH to his "Follow" Circle, he can choose to pick some among many DHH's Channels and everyone is happy.

Finally, DHH's "public" posts are only visible to those who specifically added him to the "Follow" circle.

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