A bear in SF

parislemon:

As opposed to a silly and pointless argument as to why Twitter needs to be more like Google+, Kevin Cheng (who happens to work at Twitter), has a really excellent look at Google+’s key feature: Circles.

Cheng gives both positives and negatives about Circles. But overall he seems skeptical not just about Circles, but the whole idea of attempting to organize people online using tools. This is similar to Paul Adams’ (formerly of Google, now of Facebook) thoughts. And this rings true to me.

I’ve been thinking about all of this a lot lately as well. And while I’m far from drawing any clear conclusion, my initial thoughts are that grouping seems to work well for mobile, ephemeral states. This is why group messaging works, and why I think something like Color, while poorly executed, is interesting.

Trying to create explicit groups for you entire social graph and being forced to maintain them just doesn’t seem tenable to me. Some people may think it is now because something like Circles offers a nice-looking tool, but I think as time goes on, they’ll stop maintaining as well. 

As Apple continues to prove, it’s about how well something works as a whole experience. Keeping lists updated on Facebook is like having root canal work done.

People need to be able to segregate some of their content. Friends, family, and public seem natural. Otherwise you’ll talking about an all or nothing situation which is what Facebook is probably for a lot of folks and it’s going to backfire (or eventually folks REALLY won’t give a hoot, but when you’re talking paying someone and choosing between two candidates, choosing the partying moron is probably not going to happen).

I don’t think the all or nothing will survive.