Google, Eric Berne circled friends first

http://gerger.co/yalimslodge/2011/08/05/google-eric-berne-circled-friends-first/

by yalimgerger • 15 years ago

18 16 15 years ago

lawlit• 15 years ago

This structure is old, and needs to be revised, since it was invented before the internet. Now, where do I put Linus torvalds on that list ? or even Larry Page, since they've got a G+ account and I have added them to the circle "modern age shakers".

scott_s2• 15 years ago

Not necessarily. G+'s circles conflate "people I know" with "people I'm interested in." This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it may even be a good thing - but I don't think it makes the cited social distinctions invalid.

AndrewDucker3• 15 years ago

I find this rather ridiculous. Most people I know have multiple groups of friends, little cross-over between them, and are happy to share different things about themselves with different groups.

Being able to tell my golfing stories with my golfing buddies, without worrying about boring my old uni friends, is a positive thing, and makes it more likely that I'll update in the first place.

scott_s2• 15 years ago

The argument is that you're in the minority. I think most people have relatively clear friend/work boundaries, but even then I encountered a few "Hmmm" moments when putting people in circles. I suspect that most people don't actually want to group the people in their social network - it can take a surprising amount of introspection. Time will tell if that's true.

AndrewDucker3• 15 years ago

Yeah, I guess we'll find out.

Mind you, if people don't care then they can just lump them into a single "Friends" circle and have done.

paganel• 15 years ago

> I find this rather ridiculous. Most people I know have multiple groups of friends, little cross-over between them, and are happy to share different things about themselves with different groups.

That's not that ridiculous. Anecdotical evidence no. 2, neither I nor anyone I know uses groups or lists on FB. And regarding the gulf experience, yesterday I just posted a soccer-related status on my FB wall and I received likes from 2 ladies, one of whom I haven't seen in 15 years and the other just recovering from cancer, either way, I wouldn't have put them in any "interested-in-soccer" list.

AndrewDucker3• 15 years ago

I use lists elsewhere, but not on FB, because FB makes it hard to use them.

There's no way, for instance, to post to a list on their Android App, or their mobile site.

geon• 15 years ago

> tell my golfing stories with my golfing buddies, without worrying about boring my old uni friends

Exactly. I have my employer and some clients in my FB friends list. I censor myself to the point where I don't post at all anymore.

yalimgerger5• 15 years ago

The solution to your problem lies within yourself. Don't censor yourself. Just write whatever you want. Nobody cares, trust me. Your boss doesn't wait staring at Facebook news feed, looking for an inappropriate status update you might post. :-). It is the boss in your head that stops you from sharing what you want.

yalimgerger5• 15 years ago

I think you are way too kind compared to most people. :-) Nobody worries about boring his friends. People are vain. They think everything they do is freaking amazing.

Hyena• 15 years ago

I think our grouping of friends is generally suppressed in our thinking. We have fine-grained distinctions among our friends, but we generally don't see it that way because they're not important re friendship.

Instead, we have different conversations with different friends. While this is normally private, that's only because of how we're interacting--in person, over chat, etc.--and not because of any desire to keep it secret. A social media site has analogs to a more general meet-up or party in that our conversations are often on the side: we're not talking to everyone but we don't mind people listening in.

The article's critique wouldn't have much intuitive appeal if it was possible to create "open" circles where conversations wouldn't appear in public, but a user who wished to see them could listen in and possibly comment, signaling their interest in joining that group.

yalimgerger5• 15 years ago

I think if Google adds one more level of complexity to its Circles, it will be used by 0.001% of the entire user base. :-)

busted• 15 years ago

Games:

You and the girl have a relationship similar to the one between Maddie Hayes and David Addison from Moonlighting. Only much much less interesting.

How the hell am I supposed to know what this means?

yalimgerger5• 15 years ago

:-). I knew I was in for this comment when I wrote this. But it fits so perfectly, I could not help it. I guess I am getting old. :-). Moonlighting is the TV show that made Bruce Willis famous. His character David and Maddie (played by Cybill Shepard) constantly argued about different issues but the subplot of every argument was their sexual attraction to each other.

Another example would be the relationship between the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons.

yalimgerger5• 15 years ago

Thanks everyone for the great comments. I kinda wish that you wrote these comments to the discussions under the blog so that every reader can benefit from it. As it is, the comments are scattered throughout the social networking universe. :-)

I am not surprised that some of you find this argument ridiculous. It is meant to be that way. Most of us here at Hacker News are software developers. We all have a tendency to overengineer unimportant details in life. :-). An engineer commented that even the Circles were not good enough for him. And he was right. He was pushing circles up to its limits and unless Google implemented Cylinders there was no way of pleasing him.

However, all this opposition proves my point: Grouping friends and posting accordingly is a rather advanced feature that does not solve a problem for the ordinary user, because the problem does not exist in the first place.

Most people don't even realize that what they post might only be relevant to some of their friends, because most people are vain. And if their friends post an item in Facebook that they don't care, they simply ignore it blissfully and go about their day.

This is just fine for most people. :-)

Google, Eric Berne circled friends first

Related Stories