I wrote about this at length in some of my early G+ engagements, apparently in comments as I can't find any specific posts on the topic. Also in some of the G+-related support forums. Oddly: Google makes searching this stuff rather difficult. And/or killed the group entirely.
Basic criticisms:
- G+ circles are asymmetric. What I call my circles (and how I classify them), and whether or not you're in them, is independent of how your classifications and/or inclusions. Sometimes you're not looking for a circle (centered on you), but a society (centered on an idea, place, thing, ...).
- In emission, circles are akin to tags in that I can indicate my focus for a conversation. But I can't tell you what that tag is. In receipt, circles indicate my interest areas, but again, I can't communicate that with those whom I'm receiving content from. This is particularly annoying in following someone who's notable in a particular area, or in several areas, but posts on a wide range of topics. It's been interesting to discover that Linus has a skin-diving hobby ... but I'm not particularly interested in those posts.
- Confounding "Public" with circles is an error.
- Confounding sharing with scope of rebroadcast is an error.
- Past a certain size, "streams" become too fucking big. For a company whose first key innovation was identifying relevant online content, Google+ presents a shit-ton of irrelevant content.
My suggested fixes:
- Create true semantic tags, and allow them to be collaboratively assigned. Yes, tags. Author can tag stuff, readers can tag stuff (optionally enabled/disabled) and/or vote on tags.
- Split scope of distribution from topic of conversation. I may want to have widely inclusive or narrowly scoped discussions of politics, religion, rape as a mode of social control in the Byzantine empire, WoW, or deadlift technique. Grant me this. A distribution might be strictly limited, limited-but-expandable, or wholly public.
- Sane foreign language management. If you're going to translate, then translate. If not, then unless I specifically say so, don't bother me with content not in my native language.
- Allow better stream filters. I'm probably going to want to weight stuff persons of interest present, but have an awareness of more widely discussed topics (breaking news, emerging trends). Allow multiple conversations to be aggregated (G+ divides, rather than unites). Don't strictly time-order stuff.
- Give me a quiet space to generate posts. Edit-box-over-streams doesn't work well.
- +1 implies -1. Make it so.
- Better crap management: trolls, spams, etc. Fer-fucin' reals, Googlez!
- As far as the social management aspect goes: less tedium, better tools. Without bugging the crap out of me, manage stuff. Clues as to when you're about to make a really bad disclosure would be good.
- Full anonymity / pseudonymity support. End of story.
I'm not sold on G+ by a long shot. It's been an interesting experiment. I'm not sold on "social networking" by a long shot either. I'm more interested in having useful networks to share thoughts/ideas/information. No, I really don't trust anyone's network/systems to my personal information, and I very much share the view expressed by some (RMS particularly articulately) that SN is a huge, voluntary, surveillance network.