jonmulholland.tumblr.com
Push use of Circles across all Google products; I want the
ability to share a Google Doc to all in my ‘Colleagues’
circle, share a Calendar Appointments to all in my
‘Friends’ circle or send a text message from my Android
handset to all in my ‘Family’ circle. Circle integration
throughout Google would be a killer feature.
The mechanism that I would suggest is to have what I'd call "public circles". These are circles that I have, that I can talk to, that anyone can join/leave. That way I can easily separate out content by type (eg technical, jokes, kid stories, etc), and not worry that pushing things out is drowning people in unwanted types of content.
You might say that I can just add people to circles that I manage. This is true, but it requires me to know who wants that content, and requires people who want it to know that they can ask me for it. Both are barriers to sharing information that I don't mind being public, but don't want to bore people who know me in different contexts.
You might also say that this is equivalent to a simple form of tagging. This is true, but I think that it would make for a simpler UI.
I proprosed a different solution to the same problem, as explained here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738084
Edit: On second read, I think we do share the same concept, just different naming.
Yet another useful variation is the idea of a public circle which multiple people can share to, aka a mailing list. There are lots of use cases for that, but that's not the primary thing that I am missing on Google+ right now.
Currently I'm just categorizing people by how I know them. For instance if I know them through work, which job(s) did I work with them in?
Looking forward trying all this stuff out. Hope they send more invites soon, they actually opened for about 30 minutes last midnight.
A really well crafted Google+ experience for the iPad would make it stand out.
It's not a native app (through the app store), but it's a really nice just-for-ipad interface that suits me just fine.
Author: have you not tried this and are therefore unaware, or do you simply disagree with my opinion that the site they serve to iPad users is easily good enough?
What app developers really need to do is to make sure their websites/apps be touch friendly and work well with tablets.
As buggy as Facebook Chat is, this feature exponentially increases the value proposition for me. (You can leave certain Friend Lists offline, while having others online.)
It's 2011 and even companies like Skype still haven't implemented this, despite it being requested repeatedly by users.
You can't honestly expect users to have the same 'Available', 'Busy', or 'Invisible' status for a chat list that could contain hundreds of people ranging from friends and family to classmates, business contacts, acquaintances, etc.
When working on a project, I need to appear 'Available' to everybody else involved, while leaving other contact groups offline so as not to be contacted about trivial matters that don't require an immediate response.
Other people I've discussed this with have said things like not wishing to be 'Available' to work colleagues outside of work hours.
The list is endless, and any company that takes Instant Messaging seriously needs this. IM isn't going anywhere.
Whereas Facebook's single-click 'on the fly' interface is superior to this - all groups always visible, one-click online and expanded, one-click offline and collapsed.
Edit: actually, it's not that they "failed," it's that they've completely ignored the importance of community building.
For example, the difference in quality between certain reddits is like night and day. This is all down to the way these reddits have nurtured their community and their values of quality.
HN is good in this regard too, although it's been slowly-yet-steadily declining due to pg's negligence of maintaining the community and managing its growth.
Google+ will probably succeed on its format alone (that is, the required application of circles), which will allow users to filter and select voices in their stream. But unless someone like Vic Gundotra steps in and puts some effort into community-building (like telling his follows to just +1 if you like the post instead of making a comment), it's going to really suck in public discussions.
Anyway, I've never seen an internet community go from crap to quality, only vice versa.
I'm not saying they're doing an awesome job. But they do care.
Thankfully almost everything calendar related supports ical or some export format that Google Calendar can handle, or it'd be a real mess. :-)
But some I really don't like are 3. and 6. He does mention it should be a sensible integration, but something like importing tweets and shares/comments from Facebook would be the LAST thing I'd want to see on Google+. Google+ really doesn't need that kind of integration.It can grow on its own, and it's for the best.
On 6. +1's is not really an intent of sharing. It's 50% of that, at most. +1'ing is very different than sharing, and it has a much lower value than a share, which means that seeing dozens of +1's from friends each day on my stream would be very spammy. I think it's better that they keep them separated, and more like a bookmarking feature. And it still helps with personalization of what you like, but not necessarily something you want to spam 100 friends with. There isn't much thought put into a +1, that's why it's so much less valuable than a share. +1'ing is an impulse thing.
Please do not do this. There are already options to share sites on Google. Also, everytime I +1 a site on the main search page, I don't want to have to specify which circles can see it--nor do I want everyone to see it.
It is linked to by https://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6ns... Christian Oestlien, ostensibly a Google+ team member, but I can’t verify if that claim is true or not.
Ease of integration with app and game circles could do wonders.