The Social Implications of Circles

• June 29, 2011
• 4 notes

Circles within Google+ look really interesting, but I wonder if they’ll lead us further down the rabbit hole of multiple online personas. I’ve often thought that I’d rather not hear about a person’s dog/kid/food/fun/etc on Twitter. I mostly follow people in the iOS/tech space and it’s often time consuming to wade through the noise looking for the information that’s applicable to running App Cubby. But the more I think along those lines, the more I appreciate how Twitter seems to encourage people to be themselves.

I mean we all put our best foot forward to a certain extent, but I feel like I’ve really gotten to know the people I follow on Twitter. When I bump into them in real life I can ask how their kid if fairing at that new school or their thoughts on french press vs. siphon coffee.

I wonder if creating a bunch of circles and overthinking which circles get to see what bits of information will end up making us less social rather than more. Though a certain level of control seems beneficial, that control might be an overly logical approach to the very human matter of self-disclosure.

Facebook started very private and is pushing users more public. Though Twitter does allow private accounts, it’s primarily been a public platform since its inception and most use it that way. Google is giving us what looks to be the best of both worlds, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Time will tell… I haven’t even gotten to use Google+.