Comment by cheald | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cheald | Hacker News Reader

No way. If they weren't competing with Facebook, they wouldn't have photo gallery functionality, Hangout, or the upcoming Games functionality. They're going straight for Facebook's throat, but they're doing it in a way that bridges the flaws in Facebook that have made room for products like LinkedIn.

I have Circles set up for groups of work colleagues, professional contacts, family, and friends who I like to share fart jokes with. In each case, I can interact with those people in a manner appropriate to the nature of my relationship with them. That solves the Facebook problem for me (I didn't use it because I nearly never had anything I wanted to share with everyone I knew in the world), and also creates an environment where I can have fun with my friends and be professional with my colleagues without compromising either group.

I really like it.

I agree that Circles seems like a great idea. I've always hated that in Facebook, everyone is either my friend or not. It's awkward to have to decide if someone is a friend. You either end up with lots of non-friend friends, or you have to start explicitly telling people "no, we are merely acquaintances. Let's be perfectly clear: I am not your friend."

That's awkward, and in real life, you don't have to do it. So you shouldn't have to do it online.

It's much better if I can group people into whatever circles make sense to me, and they can do the same to me. Nobody should get to see how I group people. It's my mental model of the world, not theirs.

It doesn't quite map to any known mental model, though, because when someone replies to your post, it's broadcast to your friends instead of their friends. I think this is potentially extremely confusing and weird. I think "Places" are a better metaphor: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333

But that increases the risk that you share information by mistake (either yours or google+) with the wrong group.

That is why people (should) have different email for private and business use. That is why I have facebook and linkedin accounts. It is very unlikely that I will upload my party pics to linkedin ;)

Certainly, that's understandable. People will still be stupid, but at that point, it's a people problem rather than a tech problem .It may just be that I grok it, but I don't forsee any problem at all separating the kinds of content I post.

It's also very unlikely that you can prevent anyone from seeing your party pics on Facebook, given FB's disregard for privacy.

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