Circles: It’s a PLUS!

I don’t need to hide the fact that I liked almost everything Google did. I’m not a “fan”, I just like the way they do things, technically accurate, simple in terms of user experience but wonderfully hi-tech.
So I looked forward this Google+ a lot  and managed to get an invitation to try it before it gets crowded.
As it happened for Twitter, except for the beautifully clean UI,  I didn’t quite get what the big deal was, until something in my head unlocked.

The circles are more than another paradigm to express Facebook friendships.
Of course they’re different because you can belong to more circles, creating feed groups. For instance, I have a “metalheads” circle where I put my friends who enjoy heavy metal and post videos and music streams just for them, without spamming around. So circles actually are circles of interest, increasing the quality of your feed. Some of them also belong to the “technocrats” circle where I post technology news. In an ideal world where everybody uses it this way, your feed would be always pertinent to your interests.

But it’s not “friendship”. Or is it?
Ironically, this paradigm expresses the concept of friendship much better than FB friendship.
Think of it: friends are, first of all, people you share interests with. Moreover, you can consider someone “friend” without the counterpart to do the same. You might want to share something with him/her, but he/she might not be interested in doing the same and at the same time, find your entries interesting and pertinent.
In FB Friendship, the relationship must be mutual. But in Google+ it doesn’t happen.

So belonging to a circle must not be “approved” by the counterpart, but ironically, the whole system allows a much greater privacy. In Facebook all friends have almost equal right to read your information (with some exceptions you can set in your privacy settings), on the contrary on Google+, you have a  smooth, powerful discriminant that is the reason you’re related to that person and this is a killer feature for other platforms.

What I hope is people will be able to quickly understand the best way to use it, increasing the quality of everyone’s experience in Google+.

Though I’m quite sure most people joined Google+ because there’s no FarmVille…