Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [17]
Types of Circles to Consider
You should create whatever circles work for you. The way you use Google+ may be different from everyone else, and you may end up setting everything you post as visible to all your circles or everyone on the Web. But if you want more fine-grained control of who you share with, here are a few types of circles you could set up:
Location-based. Sometimes you really do want to tell everybody you know how great the weather is in your neck of the woods. But your friends in Baltimore probably don’t care about the awesome cupcake shop you just found in Portland, Maine. So it might make sense to create separate Baltimore and Portland circles.
Work groups, volunteer groups, and so on. If you work with people on projects, Google+ is a great way to share resources and comments—and even communicate in real time. Add the people you work with on various projects to project-specific circles to start the conversation.
Casual groups. Maybe you meet up with a small crew every day, week, or month to have coffee, try a new restaurant, or take in a movie. Wouldn’t it be nice to relive jokes, expand on ideas, or just trade gossip between sessions? Create a circle for each group to do just that.
Sensitive and tricky types. Some people just can’t resist the temptation to comment on, question, or raise a ruckus over every little thing. You don’t have to create circles like Powder Kegs, Gossips, Irritable Conservatives, or Sensitive Liberals, but if you do, the people you add to them would never know and you might save yourself some headaches. Having circles like these will prevent you from simply posting everything to all your circles, but it’s worth that inconvenience to avoid having those people post head-shaking comments.
More-specific Following circles. Rather than just adding everyone you’re interested in hearing from to the generic Following circle (How Circles Work), consider creating separate circles for your specific interests: Cooking, News, Technology, Music, and so on.
You may not need all this differentiation in your Google+ account, but circles are free and you can create as many as you want, and having a lot of them isn’t usually a bother, so you may want to try adding a few to see whether they work for you. You can always delete the ones you don’t end up using.
Editing and Organizing Circles
THE CIRCLES PAGE MAKES it easy to organize your social contacts. To get started putting everything in its place, put your cursor over a circle at the bottom of the page. When you do, the circle expands and, in the gray ring around the outside, you see the headshots of up to a dozen of the people in that circle. Next to the circle, a message box appears that lists the total number of members in that circle.
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To delete someone from a circle that you’re pointing to on the Circles page, simply click the person’s headshot in the gray ring and drag their picture off the circle.
For the four circles Google provides (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following), the message box also includes a description, but you don’t have to stick with it. To edit that description or do more in-depth circle editing, click anywhere in the blue center of the circle. When you do, the circle flies up to the top half of the Circles page, where you’ll see boxes for each of the people in that circle. (You can tell which circle’s members are displayed because Google+ puts the name of the circle above the boxes.)
The circle you clicked turns gray, and Edit, Delete, and Share links appear in it. Clicking Edit displays a small box, where you can change the circle’s name and description. The Delete link does just what you’d expect—deletes that circle. But deleting a circle only deletes the circle itself. You can always find the people in it again