Whatever you think of Google+ so far, whether you’ve had a chance to try it yet or not, there’s no doubt that one of the best things about it is the ability to create ‘circles’ of friends via a really simple ‘drag and drop’ interface. Wouldn’t it be great if Facebook friend lists were so easy? Now they are.
Circle Hack is an incredibly simple app – just log in via Facebook and all your friends are displayed in the same way as they are in Google+, except your ‘Circles’ equate to any Facebook lists you may already have. Simply drag friends on to the corresponding circle and they’re added to the list. Creating a new list is just as easy.
Facebook’s Simon Cross yesterday tweeted about Circle Hack making the point that Facebook lists have been around for a long time, despite not being a well-known feature. Perhaps that’s all down to the user interface. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg said of the flaws in Facebook’s friend organisation function, “Nobody wants to make lists”. Maybe they do, they were just looking for an easy way to do it.
Circle Hack, as well as being a fun demo of how organisation works in Google+ for people who don’t have it yet, is also a really quick and easy way of getting your Facebook friends arranged exactly how you want them. As for how to bring your Facebook friends over to Google+ see here for that.
facebook lists come with very little functionality, so it’s no wonder people don’t make them. Is there any way to simply check what’s up with the people you’ve listed as ‘family’ on facebook?
Very nice. But neverthelesse this is a “hack”, which means that it is not an official part of Facebook. And that’s very sad. Google’s UI is really smooth, Facebook lost there all the way.
Oh dear. I recall TNW bloggers being equally interested in and excited about Buzz and Wave, adding to the widespread mass-hysteria.
Google+ will be another GFail. I don’t think anyone at TNW doubts that prediction if theyr’e honest.
Circles is really just another concept blatantly copied from Facebook, given what’s clealy intended to be a cool sounding name (cringe at the Google geeks). Personally, I prefer the name Lists, because it clearly describes what the feature is! (Almost every aspect of “Google+”, and indeed Google+ as a whole, is an unashamed attempt to clone of Facebook functionality.)
Facebook’s Lists were originally much more prominent in Facebook. Perhaps this blogger doesn’t remember that. I was dissappointed when FB made Lists less prominent, but Mr Z clearly knows what most users want.
Google circles is the right idea. I often pause to make a comment in Facebook because I only want the comment to go to close ‘rude joke’ type friends rather than sister, cousin and other people who I don’t want to share it with. As there is no easy way to do that, I simply don’t submit the comment.
So overall it’s not the things that people do on facebook that are all important, it’s also the things that they don’t do! Ideally facebook should make the homepage into multiple columns so i can add people to my different ‘circles’ i.e. friends, family and other. Then, when I post into friends, the others don’t see it at all ‘ever’
The problem is that facebook is not built this way and I get the feeling they won’t change that much. They want things to be easily shared / tagged etc and actually restricting that will restrict the flow. Google circles is the right concept but it may not be enough to drag users from Facebook over to it unless it turns out to be truly awesome and Google puts everything behind it over a long period of time. It is possible but it would take strong leadership and truly amazing added value to get that momentum.
Love you developers !!!
Gret job! Just created a list with 110 people in no time! Finally!
Great point. I don´t see any reason for making a list on facebook.
@Katinka Hesselink Great point. I don´t see any reason for making a list on Facebook. I really wouldn´t feel comfortable the things I posted to my “family” of facebook would not be readable by anybody else.
Doesn’t matter, The functionality of the list and circles are different. You can’t message only the people in that circle. You can limit the people who can see a photo only to your family list. Sure make a list in Facebook but what good does that really do? Nothing!
Doesn’t matter, The functionality of the list and circles are different. You can’t message only the people in that list. You can’t limit the people who can see a photo only to your family list. Sure make a list in Facebook but what good does that really do? Nothing!
You can do all that with list :)
Just go back and check your settings, good luck.
Zuckerberg is wrong, the problem is not that nobody wants to make lists, the problem is that his interface makes them so hard to use to. They’ve also hidden the feature pretty well, that lots of facebook users don’t even know that capability is there in the first place.
http://sellmic.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook-friend-lists-suck-when-compared-to-googleplus-circles/
what are you talking about, yes you can limit who sees your photos. the entire purpose of friend lists are to limit people from seeing things you post.
@Katinka Hesselink
yes, you can have your news feed display updates of only the people on certain lists. on the main page where your news feed is displayed, right next to where it says “Top News”, you’ll see a link that (most of the time) says “Most Recent” — click it. your news feed will refresh to show you the most recent updates of all your friends, and there will now be a small arrow right next to “Most Recent” indicating a drop down list. when you open the drop down list, you’ll see your friend lists appear at the bottom. when you click on a friend list, your news feed will only display updates of the people on that friend list.
No, it’s not the same. YES, you can lock down pictures where they can only be seen by certain lists, but statuses? Posts? Sure, you can decide which Facebook friend lists see your statuses, links, etc. – but you have to do that on the front end. There are some things I would say to EVERYONE, some things I just want to say to my friends, some things I just want to share with some friends. The only way to do that is to be using the desktop version of facebook and you can adjust the privacy settings per post. But you can’t do that on the mobile version (neither app nor mobile site). So I really have to decide which lists see what on the front end, not on a post by post basis.
Add that to the fact that it isn’t as easy to remember who is in what list on Facebook. Google made that easier by designing it visually based on a format you already use – you already think of people you know in “circles” of friends, so this works better.
If you can’t see the difference in Facebook friend lists and Google+ circles it’s because you haven’t used Google+.
And they keep changing how they work. There was a time where you could filter the News Feed by a friend list. And use a default list for the News Feed view. Regrettable that the functionality was taken away.
Except Facebook has changed some people’s profiles to eliminate the “Most Recent” link from their feed. I see it in my feed, and it is literally missing on my husbands login (and other folks). When a company randomly changes base functionality for some people and not others, with no option to restore it and no notification…there’s a problem.
I think that Google+ will completely destroy Facebook.
Amy @ http://cowboy-millionaire-review.com/