Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [13]
Why not just put a few relatives in the Family circle, dump everybody else into Friends, and move on? You could do that, but you’d miss out on the advantages of sorting folks into circles. The following section explains more about how circles work; after reading it, you’ll likely understand the allure of circles.
Deciding Who to Share With
You have multiple interests, certain views that don’t conform to what people might expect, and people you know through particular interests or activities.Similarly, you’re probably not interested in everything your friends are interested in. For example, you and your buddy from the softball team might have remarkably compatible views on 80’s synth-pop and the best sushi in Brooklyn, but your politics might not align in the slightest. This doesn’t come up in face-to-face meetings, because you’ve both learned each other’s boundaries. But if you started a newsletter or blog that you filled with all your current political opinions and sent it out to friends like this, it would probably put an uncomfortable chill on your relationships.
This gets at the heart of what circles are meant to do. When you want to share something—a photo, a link to a web page, a “check-in” showing where you are,or just a quick note—circles make it easy to share it with exactly the right people. For example, you could upload photo 3,437 of your newborn and share it with your Family circle, the Friends With Kids circle you created to solicit parenting advice, and maybe even your Sorority Sisters circle for some bragging rights. The people in those circles will see your bundle of joy—but the folks in your Coworkers, Indianapolis, and Neighbors circles won’t.
When you view your Google+ Home page (click the Google+ logo at the top of the screen to hop there), you get the other side of the coin: You see posts written by the people in your circles that they’ve shared either publicly or with a circle they put you in. So what do you do with that one friend who’s kinda funny but who constantly complains about “tragedies” like high-end fashion boutiques not having the exact handbag she’s looking for? You have two options: You can view only posts from circles you’ve created for more curated posts and less conspicuous consumption, or you can add her to a circle named something like Blabbers, and then only visit that circle when you feel like expanding your angst horizons. (Chapter 3 explains how to view posts from specific circles.)
Circles also let you have focused conversations with a select group of people. Creating a circle like “Race for the Cure Marketing Team,” makes it easy to send links, updates, and photos to your team, and even have group text-messaging or video-chat sessions with them, without letting anybody in on the conversation who doesn’t need to be there.
Perhaps the most important thing to know about circles is that you can assign people to multiple circles. For example, you could add your buddy Steve to your Los Angeles, Church, and Coffee Snobs circles. That way, if you post something about the City of Angels, an announcement for members of your congregation, or a link to a site that sells the single-source, shade-grown Arabica you’re loving, Steve will be sure to see it.
Adding People to Circles
NOW THAT YOU KNOW how circles work, you’re probably itching to start organizing the people you know into circles. The best way to get started is to click the Circles button (pictured back on How Circles Work) at the top of whatever Google+screen you’re on.
If you’re truly new to the Google universe (you don’t use Gmail, for example) and just created your Google account as explained in Chapter 1, your Circles page will look like the one here. (You can practically hear the crickets.) But if you use Yahoo’s email service, Hotmail, or a desktop email program and have a sizable contact list built up, you can import those contacts into