Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [27]
For a reminder of who’s in that circle, point your cursor at the blue rectangle. If there are a bunch of people in that circle, you’ll see the first few names, and you can see the rest by clicking the “View all” link at the top of the pop-up box. What about the “Notify about this post” checkbox? Normally, when you post to a specific circle, the people in that circle will see this post if they look at their main stream or the stream for whatever circle they put you in (like if Bob looks at the stream for his Gourmands circle, for example). If you turn on the “Notify about this post” checkbox, Google+ will also send the people you’re sharing with a special alert about your post. Depending on their Google+ settings, that could mean they see a notification in their Google toolbars, receive an email, or hear a little bloop from their phone—something like, “Take note: Devon Kurdy wants you to see this post.” (Chapter 4 has the details on notifications.)
NOTE
If you add someone who’s not on Google+ to one of your circles, when you go to share a post with that circle, you’ll see a checkbox next to the Share button labeled “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+.” This checkbox is turned on automatically, and it’s basically an attempt by Google+ to attract more users. Google is hoping that, when your friend gets an email letting him know about the post, he’ll sign up for Google+ to see the brilliant insight you’ve written.
Other posting tips
Clicking the +Add box and selecting circles by clicking works okay if you’ve got less than, say, a dozen circles. But if you have more than that, the list becomes quite long and a bit cumbersome. Fortunately, there’s an easier way to add circles: click the +Add box and then typing a few letters of the name of the circle you want. When the right one appears, hit Enter (Return on a Mac) or click its name in the list.
In addition to—or instead of—sharing with circles, you can share posts with individual people. For example, say you want to share news of your promotion with everyone in your Family circle and your buddy Bruce, or you just heard some gossip about your high school math teacher and want to share it with your three closest friends. To share with a specific person, click the +Add box and start typing her name, and Google+ will suggest matches.
The names of people who are already contacts of yours should appear at the top of the list, but what about the other folks listed? Those names are Google+’s guesses as to other Google+ members you might know. If a name looks familiar but you’re not sure (or the name is something as common as John Smith), click the name to add that person. Then, click the person’s name in the +Add box to see her profile.
TIP
When you mention someone in a post, that person is automatically added to +Add box, and also, even if they’re not? That’s the point behind Google+ adding them automatically, right? You can’t remove them, either. Google+ is old-fashioned that way—it won’t let you go talking about somebody without their knowing it.
If it turns out you don’t know this particular John Smith, no problem. To delete a person or circle from the +Add box, click the X at the right end of the rectangle representing that person or circle.
When all the right people and circles are listed in the +Add box, click Share to send your post out to those people’s streams.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: THE INCOMING STREAM
I don’t see an Incoming circle on my Circles page, so what’s the deal with the Incoming stream?
The Incoming stream is an anomaly in that it doesn’t match up with a specific circle. (The other exceptions are your main stream—which shows posts from people in all your circles—and the Notifications stream, which only includes notifications [see Chapter 4].) Here are the kinds of posts that appear in your Incoming stream:
Posts by friends of friends. As you learned on Writing a post while viewing