Sunday, July 10, 2011

So, what are the names of your circles?

So I've had google plus for about a week now, and am loving most things about it - from its unidirectional relationship model (which in my opinion models real human relationships very well, as we had in our papers on the yarta mobile social middleware), to its very useful mobile app. Looking forward to the upcoming features.

However, with the coming of circles comes the question: what do you call them? Do single word common nouns really suffice in representing the multiple groups in which we categorize those we know?

Personally, I don't think so. I mean, I have friends from work, friends from Paris, friends from LA, .... then colleagues from several working groups... the list is endless! And then there is the question of coming up with names to determine "closeness" to a person.

Therefore, I think I might settle on a content based naming scheme, especially for the second challenge above; after all, isn't the whole use of circles to (restrict) share(ing) of content?

So, here is a suggested list of circles, in increasing order of closeness :) :

  1. knows-my-name (basically, public)
  2. knows-my-profession
  3. knows-name-of-my-wife
  4. knows-name-of-my-girlfriend
  5. knows-name-of-my-crush
  6. knows-name-of-my-boyfriend (!!)

So, what are your ideas for circle names?

6 comments:

  1. this is how G+ is being integrated with my other social networking sites!!

    1. knows me via FB
    2. knows me on Twitter
    3. knows me at LinkedIN
    4. knows me through Gmail
    5. Knew me at Yahoo :P (coz I deleted that account :P )

    ReplyDelete
  2. Acquaintance
    Friend
    Work-Friends
    Colleague
    Family

    ReplyDelete
  3. I already do this kind of listing on my Facebook account... although Facebook is already a bit restrictive about how it lets you limit data and of course whether you limit access to just a few friends or not we all know that our data is retrievable for those who'll pay for it!

    I have just a very basic list:

    Family
    Friends
    Extended family
    Other
    Limited profile

    I like the idea of colleague and 'work-friend' but I actually don't have any of my colleagues contact details or Facebook anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Long time, no blog???? kithe si?

    ReplyDelete