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?