Has Google Finally Done Social Right? Google Plus' Circles UI Makes Me Think Maybe

Google Plus, the search engine giant's answer to Facebook, is finally live in closed Beta -- my Internet sifu Om Malik has a good rundown here -- and it's the company's unstated answer to the Silicon Valley axiom, "Google doesn't get social." They've tried to create their own alternative to Facebook and Twitter and even Second Life (hello goodbye Lively) and consistently failed. But Google Circles, a major feature to Plus, makes me wonder if they've finally maybe kinda sorta got social right. Look:

You drag-and-drop your social connections into discrete circles, which, as Nalates Urriah points out, "makes Facebook’s processes look positively ancient. Drag a person to a circle certainly beats drop down menus." To me, that almost seems like the killer app to Plus. I've come to depend on Facebook on a personal and professional level, but with nearly 2000 friends, trying to sort close friends, family, colleagues, casual acquiantances, and, well, avatars, has become by now a necessary but impossible task. Especially with that fricking Facebook drop down.

No word on whether Google Plus will have strict regulations against anonymous account/avatar names, like Facebook does. But my guess is that Google will accept Gmail accounts as valid, without demanding, as Facebook now reportedly does for flagged accounts, a photo ID. Great googly moogly I sure would love a Beta invite to Google Plus, he guilelessly hinted out loud.

Comments

[Tateru Nino]

So, that's the same basic idea as Diaspora then?

[Cisop Sixpence]

I'd like to give this a try too.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I can't see why I should trust the 'do all evil' company more than the 'personal privacy is so last century' company. Especially after seeing how Chrome stores 'supposedly encrypted' passwords in plain text for anyone with access to the browser to see.

Facebook views your data as public.
Google views your data as theirs.

- Which is a more dangerous attitude?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Most FB users are not digerati of the sort who read NWN and won't switch, even if a better competitor appears. Your grandparents are on FB now.

Unless Google were to include an easy migration tool as they have done in Docs, laziness or fear of losing content will keep the college kids, as well as mee-maw and paw-paw, at FB, despite the crappy interface and lag I'm beginning to see at peak times.

Sound familiar?

[Dizzy Banjo]

Been trying it with an ex Googler here in the office. Looks like a replica of earlier Google social network efforts really apart from Circles.

This is good in that you can drag and drop into groups, but in terms of functionality it only really delivers the same as Twitter Lists I think.

We felt that its all about critical mass - FB just has such huge numbers and history - who can really be bothered to transfer all that a new network?

[Nexii Malthus]

MySpace used to have huge numbers and history but it didn't take long for someone else to take over. Social networks can co-exist and it happens all the time. History repeats itself. In fact, the same things said about FB were the same things said about MySpace.

@Ingatius, Dizzy
Google doesn't need migration tools. You can include other people in your circle who don't have G+. That's a LOT more superior to facebook which requires everyone to be in their walled garden. This is the one key difference. (At least from what information is available that I have read on G+. Dizzy could you confirm this?)

[Dizzy Banjo]

Yes thats true about adding people to contacts, but in general just setting up is work. Loads of uploaded photos and being members of groups etc is a hassle to transfer.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

If it supports pseudonymity, I'm willing to give it a shot.