Sorta Kinda Fed Up With Facebook Disses by Google+ Fanatics

Article after article claims what this one entitled "Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?" does:

Instead of treating all of your friends as equals, Google lets you put them into different groups, called circles, such as “friends”, “acquaintances”, “family”, “sports fans”, and so on. These circles represent a powerful innovation.

They allow us to send more personal updates just to our closest friends instead of forcing us to share with all of our hundreds of acquaintances. This simple task is not easy to do within Facebook. Furthermore, Google+ allows us to chop up our incoming news stream based on what circle they are coming from, so that we can focus on just the updates from our family or just the updates from our coworkers. The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform.

Nothing against Google+ here. I'm still checking it out as I have been for the past couple weeks. There are some things I like a lot about it. And some things that annoy me. But that's not the point of my post. You can read a lot of reviews elsewhere. 

This post is about the lame claim that groups or "circles" is a new concept or "powerful innovation" as the above post claims. 

Hellloooooo.

Facebook has offered groups, called "lists" for years. I know. I use them every single day. Everything written above can be achieved in Facebook. 

I'll be specific:

• Instead of treating all of your friends as equals, FACEBOOK lets you put them into different groups, called LISTS (such as “friends”, “acquaintances”, “family”, “sports fans”, and so on)
• The LISTS allow us to send more personal updates just to our closest friends instead of forcing us to share with all of our hundreds of acquaintances. 
• This simple task IS easy to do within FACEBOOK. 
• FACEBOOK allows us to chop up our incoming news stream based on what LIST they are coming from, so that we can focus on just the updates from our family or just the updates from our coworkers. 
• The FACEBOOK LISTS concept is powerful and easy to use. 

The author wrote: "[Circles] represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking." WRONG.

And he wrote: "If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform."

Ack! It's there.

Facebook is NOT in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features. Perhaps they can make them more obvious, though. Let me show you how easy they are to use. 

STEP 1 - CREATE LISTS

Very easy. In the ACCOUNT dropdown, chose EDIT FRIENDS. Your screen will have a CREATE A LIST button at the top. It looks like this:

 

Make as many lists as you want.

STEP 2 - ADD FRIENDS TO LISTS

Then on the left sidebar, choose FRIENDS NOT ON A LIST to start, or any list name to edit. To the right of each friend's name you can open your list of LISTS and add the friend to as many or few lists as you like. I have a list called "Nothing" and I have miscellaneous pages and what-not in it.

Let's pretend Led Zep is one of my friends. (oh how I wish.) It would look like this:

 

STEP 3 - POST YOUR LITTLE HEART OUT

Either as you post, or for your default privacy, of for each photo album you have, whatever, you can designate who can see it, or who cannot see it, or both.

To change your default or to edit any individual post's visibility, click on the little lock doohickey under your status box, to the left of the SHARE button.

 

When the lock settings open, designate who can or cannot see your stuff, and save as your default if you want.

Enter a person's name or the name of any list you have created. Add as many as you like. When you start typing a name or list name, Facebook will offer up autocomplete help for you. 

 

Voila. You're done. 

 

UPDATED: Oh, and I forgot to share the other important piece. To view the news feed of any single LIST, meaning just the stuff the list members post, is quite easy.

STEP 4 - VIEW NEWS BY GROUP OR "LIST"

Go to your HOME page and, at the top where it says TOP NEWS and MOST RECENT note the little DOWN ARROW on the button called MOST RECENT.

When you click the button, many options open including the ability to select any of your LISTS.

Guess Facebook isn't so far behind after all. And you can still hate Facebook if you want. But at least I hope that, now, maybe all these people quit claiming this is such a huge innovation on Google's part. Geez.

But, otherwise, that article I mentioned is really pretty good. Just skip the first third of it!

Comments

[Bill Sheridan]

Excellent points, Michelle! A lot of the features you get with G+ have been around for a long time now.

What I really like about G+, though, is that much of its functionality is based on those really cool features ("circles" / "lists"). Google has made it very easy, intuitive and even fun to add people to your network and communicate with them. It's still a bit early, but it seems to me as though G+ has taken a lot of what we like about social networks and improved on it.

It'll be fun to see of that holds up as more people participate.

[RSOldring]

I am glad you posted this. I was starting to think I was the only one who saw the similarity between Facebook Lists and Google Circles. Google has done some very cleaver marketing.

[Raissa Evans]

I agree. In fact, Zuck said as much during the online streaming launch of the Facebook/Skype video chat release. He not only compared Circles to Lists, but he also cleverly dropped in that Facebook still has Groups - which is another thing entirely. Circles don't create group spaces or group conversation the way that Groups do, and there's definitely a space for it.

And kudos for your easy to follow step-by-step for your readers!

[JoeKovacsAPR]

Thanks for this great post, Michelle. I sometimes feel as though too many individuals get so caught up in the hype of a new Google launch that they never engage in a practical down-to-earth comparison between new and pre-existing tools. Your assessment is a very good one. It's been a while since your last post and this one was worth waiting for.

[Michael Johnson]

Very interesting article but I'm unclear on why you would need to put any group in the "Hide this from" area if "Only the people above can see this". Unless there are duplicate people that are in the groups? Example: You have Mary in group 'Family' and 'Nothing' as well and you don't want her to specifically see the post? Please clarify.

[Michelle Golden]

Thanks for your comments and kind words @Raissa @Rick and @Joe! Joe, I hang my head in shame at how seldom I've been posting ... so not my intent to be this intermittent!

@Bill, I think it was fun adding people to circles at first, but going back in later to manage those circles is something I find to be quite a pain. Too few people show up in a single view and they sort of dodge around as you go to select them. Anyone else finding this to be a hassle?

@Michael, you raise an excellent question and you're exactly right! Say you have something you want your family and friends to see (as opposed to business people) but it might not be appropriate for the most conservative (easily-offended) folks. So, you could say show it to "Family" and "Friends" but hide it from "Nothing Wild" which might be the group that you dropped people into if you thought they'd take issue with foul language or political jokes or whatever else you might consider questionable content.