Not Quite a Blog

I recently started using Google's newly-released social network service, Google+ (or G+).

First, I should say that I left facebook and deleted my account there in May of 2010 after a series of privacy-related screw-ups had me setting and resetting their horrible privacy settings. I regretted leaving as people I don't interact with otherwise were starting to use it heavily.

Google+ seems to me like Buzz++; that is, Buzz on steroids. The central interaction is very Buzz-like with a "stream" of posts from people that leave comments, "+1" things (the G+ version of "like"), etc. And it has things I have yet to use: Huddling for group IM or video chat and Sparks which appear to be ways to keep in the know about keywords (like "Chocolate Cake").

The fascinating part of G+, and the one that has many of us privacy-interested thinkers thinking hard about, is the approach to articulated networks that they're using. You can add anyone on G+ to a "circle" that you give a name to, like "Friends", "Work", "Berkeley", whatever. Then, when you share content, you can limit viewing of it to certain circles or choose to share it publicly.

Here are some thoughts:

• When you join G+, your Google profile goes from something nice like this: http://profiles.google.com/joehall, to something ugly like this: https://plus.google.com/116963721990743023887/. Yuk... although the pretty one does redirect to the ugly one!

• The site is right now all about feedback and they have a very cool feedback interface... you click on the give feedback link and then the form tool allows you to mark up the page to point out what went wrong and what you expected to happen. This is great... of course, sometimes you have feedback that doesn't depend on the current page, so maybe that should be an option: "Are you having a problem with the current page? Yes? Can you highlight where the problem is?" This tool also allows you to redact personal information that the page might contain. Cool!

• Of course, as a FF user running NoScript, the first thing I learned is that to leave feedback, you have to temporarily whitelist javascript from googleusercontent.com, which I always thought is a janky google domain (there's probably a good reason for it!).

• When you look at your "stream" (the G+ equivalent of an fb wall), it shows you posts from all your circles by default. One consistent feature request I've heard from people on G+ is the ability to specify which circles show up by default in your stream (or maybe create multiple streams). I have a circle called "Random Riffraff" that consists of everyone who has added me to a circle but that I don't really want to read posts from. However, I can't easily exclude these people from my stream without removing them from all circles (or blocking them).

• There appears to be some group evolution going on in terms of how to best use circles. The best answer I've heard yet is from a researcher (who didn't post this publicly, so I won't name them) who has two disjoint circles for "Friends" and "Acquaintances" and then thematic circles for issues he would like to publish content to (like "Security"). This is a very personal distinction... for example, I'm usually very careful who I agree is a "friend" (I should know them reasonably well and have had friendly interactions with them!). I'm not sure how this will play out for me, but I hope to find something that works.

• There is news of a "privacy flaw" discovered by the Tim Bradshaw at the Financial Times. The idea is that no matter how small of a circle you may share a private piece of information with on G+, one of those recipients can "reshare" that content publicly, potentially violating the original context in which the poster wanted it kept within. (Dan Wallach and I found this "flaw" yesterday at about 21:15 EDT. :P ) The more I've thought about this, the less convinced I am about it being a flaw. Like email, the ultimate discretion in publishing anything lies with the poster, and like the "analog hole", there's not much we can do to thwart a determined sharer. G+ lets posters limit resharing by prohibiting resharing of certain posts after posting (it should be an option one can select while crafting a post). And certainly, G+ should give consumers of content more hints about how limited of a scope a given post is shared within... I'm not sure of the best way to do that. It does allow you to see approximately how many people something was shared with, and maybe that's enough ("500 of my closest friends" could be an edge case.)

• We really need some more set operations... like I would like to be able to select all "non-Friends" and add them to "Acquaintances". I'd like to post to these circles but not to anyone in this circle that also happens to be in the other circles.

• If I don't know you, and you add me to a circle but you seem legit, I won't add you to any circles. If I don't know you, and you add me to a circle but you're clearly not legit, I'll block you.