Comment by JohnLBevan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnLBevan | Hacker News Reader

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One other thought around circles. It would be cool if some kind of backwards circle functionality could be created. For example, I post a few links to my feed about tech stuff which only a handful of my friends are interested in, so I have two options: 1) post to just my "techies" circle so as not to spam my other friends 2) post to public so that anyone who's interested can see (including people who follow me but whom I haven't circled as I don't know them). The first option excludes my followers, the second spams my friends. I could create another circle of followers and message them and the techies, but that doesn't sit comfortably, especially as I don't know which of my posts caused those people to follow me (perhaps a music video I favourites on youtube caught their eye and now they're getting spammed with HN links). Having some way where I could create circles to publish stories to, but have others subscribe to those would be handy - I then publish to my "tech stuff" circle, and anyone who cares to subscribe to "JohnLBevan.TechStuff" sees it, whilst it's hidden from others (to prevent annoying them - not for security). Again, I'd welcome your thoughts. Cheers, JB

That's interesting; it seems to me that if circles aren't actually intended to be used from a content driven perspective (eg person X is an amateur photographer and also posts about geocaching; they don't care who reads either but they don't want to spam people that are interested in only one or the other) then that is how circles would be (you 'tag' your own posts and people who follow you subscribe to just some of your tags).

I actually think that definitively shows that the intent of circles is just security (person X doesn't want his mom seeing his drinking photos) and that the possibility of sharing content based on what the reader is interested in really just comes for free with that (though in a roundabout and inconvenient way; the provider has to determine what content the reader is interested in).

Thanks esrauch - agreed, they're just there for security at present, but have a lot of potential to be a lot more with just a few tweaks to existing functionality. One of the big differences of having circles which could be used as tags is these posts could also be shown to public and not to those in your circles other than those who've subscribed to the tag. I believe one reason Twitter's so popular is it allows you to post whatever you like and people choose to be interested - if someone tried to make the facebook status public and put the same stuff in there that they put on twitter lots of their friends would end up blocking them.

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