I do it all the time. G+ is like having a blog, twitter and facebook all in the same place, so I can post articles, work-related things, and deeply retarded stuffs only intended to my friends all in the same place instead of having to manage multiple networks. I just need to select the right groups when posting and voila!
I can't count the number of bitching posts about the complexity of circles. But they are as complex as you make them.
You can tweet and blog (full-public post), send restricted messages (circles), or even private messages (single user).
I think the more interesting question would be "how many circles do you actively use"? I went circle-crazy and categorized a ton of people, but really only use "Friends", "Acquaintances", and two other circles -- both of which neatly translate to real circles of friends.
I would have settled for "always or almost always", "sometimes", and "never or almost never"—the choices and the number of them were a bit confusing, and I don't think anyone keeps a statistical average of the number of times they share publicly to warrant that number of choices.
Always because some of the people on my circles don't really care for the things I say work-related. But then I thought I'm only showing my work-related stuff to a circle of coders and the whole world is missing it.
I believe I wanted Google+ to fix this problem for me, I was expecting a place where I could do my private life (with circles) and improve my professional life (public but without annoying some cirles of the private life).
In the end, I just feel lost not knowing how to use that pretty thing...
G+ definitely needs a circle exclusion option. Then you could have public posts with several circles excluded (they can still read it since it's public but it won't pollute their stream unless they reply).
But they will pick it up soon, no doubt. The need is there, technical possibilities are endless, so submit your feedback as I did and wait.
I'm in the same boat. I post work stuff to my "Techno-Geeks" circle. Then when I look at the stream for this circle, I see all my geeky friends' cat pictures that they're posting to "Public" or their "Friends" circle. I'd love to have a group feature that works the way circles work, so I'd only see relevant posts when I go to the group-circle, and other people could post to it as well.
google identity = work (buzz, profile, gmail, twitter)
facebook identity = social
i think most people will continue to use existing social networks. we'll post appropriate content to our audience, and the audience at each network has a different tone. this is natural, i think.
I agree with you but I always thought circles would be amazing for my personal life since my work-related stuff should be public (at least most of it).
I have three personas: my professional, my personal and my social. Some people see more than one of my personas depending on context - if I'm out with a bunch of friends and run into a VC, I quickly switch into my professional persona.
Separate websites for each social context makes my life easier. LinkedIn is professional. Facebook is social (well, before my contacts got mixed up). Dating websites are personal.
Google+ doesn't provide a strong visual indicator to help me switch contexts. I'm not absolutely certain that I haven't mixed up one of my business contacts with my personal ones. Add to that the chance that something gets sent out publicly by mistake and there is absolutely no chance I'll use G+ for anything beyond Twitter with pictures.
So you still have a major disappointment ahead when your online personas (all of which are public btw) will clash with undesired consequences. At least in G+ you are controlling your privacy, not just luck/obscurity which you currently seem to rely on.
I've personally used private circles to categorize where and how I know people. So unless I want to blast a message out to such a group, I don't use circles for that content.
However I really, really would like to tag what I make public. As things stand I censor myself to only talk about things that I think are of more general interest. And this frustrates me to no end. If there were some option to categorize my public content and only send it to people who want it, I'd be using it in a heartbeat.
I SO agree with this comment. Is there anyone else out there who wants a 'tag and subscription' type post? I'd like to tag all my tech related posts with 'tech', and then anyone who wants to actually read them can click a checkbox on my profile that say's tech, and bam my tech posts will appear in there profile. Otherwise it won't pollute their stream.
I post the majority of my stuff to the public stream, because I use Google+ like Twitter except without the limit on what I want to say, and a much better interface for conversation.
I also post the majority of my stuff as public. I suspect that my "Limited" circle posts will pretty much always be less than 10% of my posts. That might lead some people to believe that the circle feature isn't important since I'm using it only occasionally, but that would be a very misguided and wrong conclusion, it is still very important to me that the feature exists for when I do want to use it.
I broadcast into the clear and receive the circles I want, except for that one time when I may have something just for a particular person. Not sure I'd want to be receiving just a selected broadcast from someone 100% of the time.
I also almost always use 'Public'. Because I don't care who sees the post and the unlikeliest of people have been leaving good comments on some of them.
A few, I knew I only wanted to target a specific audience, and so that's where they went.
I have a "Shitlist" circle that I post demotivational quotes to on a regular basis. The rest of the time I post publicly. Just so no one gets the wrong idea, most of the people on my shitlist requested to be there.
Absolutely. I'm finally able to share techie stuff with people that care, and personal/silly stuff with people that care, and sometimes those 2 sets intersect, and sometimes they don't.
