Google+’s Circle Logic

businessweek.com

14 pointsSerene3 comments

Much discussion of Google+ has focused on the differences of the way friends and sharing works compared to facebook, and whether the difference is attractive enough to bring prospective users over from facebook. Google+ has other differences which stand out to me, such as design and the fact that it's not facebook (the fact that there is an XKCD comic highlighting this as well suggests it matters to others also).

I agree. And the fridge acquisition shows that they're not done implementing new ways to share yet. I think the trick will be to make it all easy to understand.

I think another non-trivial difference is that there no ads, at least not yet. Even if they add gmail-style ads, it'll be a lot better than FB. But more importantly, Google doesn't necessarily need to make money on Google+. They just need it to help make search better, so they can continue to make money on search ads, which is their real bread and butter.

The use of circles suggests the iconography of Dante's Inferno.

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