He's right in that Facebook was helpful by auto-creating certain "groups" of friends for you based on profile information. Where this completely breaks down is once you move past the trivial task of auto-populating categories for your location, school, and work.<p>As I see it there are three modes of sharing:<p>The first is where my post is quite innocent and generic, so I just want to declare it to the world. This goes in public.<p>The second is where my post is pretty irrelevant to most of my friends, and is really only directed at a portion of them. So to prevent clogging the feeds of the rest of my friends, I submit it to a specific group like "Biking Buddies." Facebook can't learn this or automatically set it up. On the other hand, I rarely care enough to only post to a group instead of public.<p>The third situation is the opposite of the second: there is a very specific group of people that I don't want to see what I'm about to post. Planning a surprise party or uploading party photos from the night before fall here. In that circumstance I only choose to post to a specific group of close friends. Again, something that Facebook can't deduce from my profile.<p>You can't get around #3 without doing shit work, except by not posting it to begin with. As a developer you can't avoid this: sometimes manual labor really is the only solution to a problem. Until we invent mind-reading, of course.
The author seems to be missing a gigantic point of order here. The reason why Facebook is algorithmically able to determine groups for you is because you, the user, have already entered in fields for Work, School, Location, etc. So the user has had to do a small amount of shit work for Facebook to do its magic.<p>Of course, that's a very small amount of work relative to manually placing friends into circles. But G+ does not (yet) have the same kind of parsed personal/profile information, which would require the same mechanism that FB has (deciding who to reveal what parts of your profile to)...and which, as far as I can tell, is not trivial to implement, or to graft on to the existing Google Account structure.<p>Of course, Google can ALREADY do this for you. No doubt they have mined enough information about each user, including locations of IP addresses, to fill out most of your boilerplate profile info. It doesn't take the EFF to realize the privacy implications of auto-filling your circles with people who don't realize that Google's algorithm has correctly guessed their location, age, school and workplace and is now implicitly exposing such information.
Griping about an optional feature? Really?<p>Circles have great utility for me for two reasons.<p>1. Like Twitter lists (which I use, thanks Tweetdeck), I want to see information from certain groups of people for different things.<p>2. I want to disseminate different types of information to different groups of people.<p>If you don't find either of these use-cases compelling, there is nothing stopping you from ignoring them completely.<p>I will never ever ever trust an algorithm to get this right, except for the most trivial cases, and if the case is that trivial, I will default to public.<p>I think ultimately the problem is that these features are trying to replicate offline social context, but only getting halfway there. I've written more about this: <a href="http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-performance" rel="nofollow">http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-perfo...</a>
I'd really love for a social network to correctly anticipate all the people i'd like to share something with, and to automagically categorize stuff like that. It'd be sweet.
But it seems like the worst-case scenario if it gets it wrong could be pretty terrible.<p>He's absolutely right, though, that a key problem with circles and lists and other shit work is that it's very rarely well integrated into the clients.<p>(I also want disagree with the claim that "no one wants to do shit work". I believe the entire genre of MMORPGs -- even, dare i say, RTS' -- stand as testament against. They also suggest how high peoples tolerance of shit work is if it is well integrated into a client ;)
It's funny because I was sort of nodding along through the beginning. I am one of the very people he mentioned with a bunch of stillborn Twitter lists. But then he went on to reference a Merlin Mann article:<p>> <i>His main point is that adding an assortment of labels, tags, and priorities to your email inbox only serves to give you the illusion of getting work done.</i><p>Which I understand, because Mann has a tendency to get into the fiddly bits, and so do I, but what's missing is that these things do potentially have utility. Case in point: I get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of non-spam emails a day. I used to use Apple Mail until it couldn't really handle the volume very well, then I switched to Gmail and learned the keyboard shortcuts. Eventually I got into labels. The UI makes it super easy to apply labels, and I label every important email. This could be considered "shit work", but it provides a solid ROI because it allows me to browse through project summaries, and makes it much less likely for things to slip through the cracks. It's amenable to automation in that I can create rules, but mostly it relies on my ability to tag every single email. It sounds like a lot of work, but once the system is in place it doesn't actually take any time to hit 'l' and autocomplete a label or two.<p>Meanwhile, Google's attempt to improve productivity without shit work—Priority Inbox—actually provides me negative value. It doesn't matter how good it is because if it's less than perfect I can't trust it, and it can't ever be perfect because countless externalities affect my idea of priorities. In the end, the assigned ratings become more noise that I have to deal with.<p>So while the point about not letting busy-work make you feel productive is a valid warning, it doesn't follow that if it can't be automated it isn't useful. It's all about ROI. I think the problem with Twitter and Google+ is that they just aren't useful enough to sink that much time into unless there is a direct professional purpose.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't understand the compulsion to post potentially embarassing information about yourself on the Internet.<p>I can't believe people are arguing about the right way to do this.<p>Twenty years ago, it was rare for someone to call everyone they ever knew and scream into the phone how drunk they were. I might have done that only once or twice in my life. (If I called you by mistake and woke you up at 2AM, I apologize.)<p>But today, if you can't provide a web-based service that not only allows you to do that very thing but protects you from the consequences of it, people will complain.
Sometime shitwork can be a very good way to find new possibilities. A lot of people do shitwork that's immensely useful, like editors on Wikipedia, moderators on reddit and forums, people who enter all the data into imdb. I don't see how those people could be replaced by algorithms with what we know now.<p>Sometime shitwork needs to be done because you can't simplify. I'm doubtful that Facebook's auto-group feature would work for me. Maybe me doing shitwork on Google+ is what work for me, because I value my freedom to control my information online.
When Google+ released, I remember being somewhat confused that they opted for user defined Circles rather than using user relations as a gauge for friend "closeness". As the author of this blog post points out, users almost never want to get stuck placing hundreds of people in groups that could change at any time.<p>In fact, one Google Research paper[1] opens with the line:
"Although users of online communication tools rarely categorize their contacts into groups such as "family", coworkers", or "jogging buddies", they nonetheless implicitly cluster contacts, by virtue of their interactions with them, forming implicit groups."<p>I'm curious what the eleven authors of this paper thought as they saw their Google co-workers developing a system they knew couldn't work.<p>[1]Suggesting (More) Friends Using the Implicit Social Graph (<a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/37120.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...</a>)
Circles is a great marketing feature.<p>By pushing the privacy aspect of Google+ it allowed Google to differentiate themselves compared to Facebook. That message has persisted.<p>Users <i>say</i> they care heavily about privacy, but in practice they don't[1]. Circles isn't a bad solution to that, except for the small minority of people who feel the pressure try to build themselves a compete categorisation of everyone they know.<p>[1] Occasionally people do care - picture sharing is one case where people are somewhat careful. Circles caters to that case quite well.
<i>The problem is that, anecdotally, no one seems to use Lists</i><p>That anecdote is not really worth much. Especially because those lists are probably very important for those who <i>do</i> use them.<p>Most people won't care about filtering their social relationships, until they do care. At that point, you want them to have the option.
The problem is that the cost/benefit of creating lists & circles isn't high enough.<p>Many developers obsess over the edge-case of "how do I post secret information that is only shown to the correct list?"<p>When in fact, normal people just want to post "Going to Aunt Edna's tomorrow!" to their family list, because it's irrelevant to non-family.<p>It seems Facebook agrees, with their loosey-goosey smart lists.
But, but... I <i>like</i> putting my friends into Venn diagrams.<p>Seriously. The 1 click it takes to put someone is a circle isn't really "work", and if it saves me awkward calls from my mom because she read a post intended for my drinking buddies, then it was <i>well worth it.</i>
Ah, this argument again. Simplicity rules.<p>I disagree. I like being able to set filters and granularity. I like having the option to give me the information I want, in the way I want it. I'm prepared to do the extra up-front setup to get the better end experience; I have hundreds of filters set up on my email, for example.<p>Don't give me forced simplicity; give me the option to tune it to my needs and give it the power to make it actually useful.
Absolutely right. I am finding that, especially with mobile, you have to really think about the design so that <i>shit work</i> is cut to a minimum. For example, I am in the process of making an iOS app, but it interfaces with an external appliance. I don't <i>want</i> to ask the user to input host, port, etc., so instead I'd much rather do the extra leg work and implement uPnP detection and <i>then</i> ask the user as a last resort. Apple has figured this out. 70% is in your face while the rest is within hands reach.<p>As an analogy, Circles is driving users to a brick wall hoping they will climb over to see what is the big deal is. Assuming they care. Assuming they aren't in the middle of something when they get the invite.<p>Which makes me think about the "Find My Friends" App on iOS. If Apple flipped the "social" switch, they would have creatively acquired a power which no other social network would be able to grasp without huge privacy backlash - knowledge of where you and all of your friends are at any given time. Here's the sell: You already have the app. How does this relate to <i>shit work</i>? Well, you'd be apart of a social network where you, your friends are already members, your latest photos are already there (iCloud), you know where your friends are and what they are doing - and you did very little work.
Agreed. This is the primary reason I don't use Google+. I haven't got the time or inclination to split people into groups or even figure out what those groups might be. I did <i>try</i> but found it a taxing process.<p>Automatically coming up with criteria to filter by is a great solution. I'd love if I could send a tweet just to my UK followers or to those who tweet about "Ruby" a lot. This is all easily solved by machines and doesn't require me to do anything by hand.
> Some people still like shit work. They can spend an hour moving Twitter accounts to special Lists, and then at the end of it look back and say “Boy, I spent an hour doing this. I really accomplished a lot today!” You didn’t. You did shit work.<p>This made me laugh.<p>I half-agree with the post. There is an element of "shit work" that actually makes users feel engaged. For instance, my iGoogle homepage has feeds set up with sites I've had to hunt down an RSS for and manually enter. I've had to invest time into rearranging the layout to my priorities.<p>It's 'shit work' in that it's manual and somewhat trial-and-error, but it leaves me feeling more invested in the product if I'm ultimately more satisfied with the end result.<p>Disclaimer: I am a PC/ubuntu guy, so I understand that mine may not be the mainstream opinion.
I use twitter lists, in part because Tweetdeck makes them easy to view. I like to follow the various food trucks around town, but usually I am only interested in them when hungry. Having them collected in a list keeps them out of my main feed.<p>They are a pain to maintain, however.
I think there are 2 camps of users - I'd rather organize my own lists than trust Facebook to do it for me. I honestly don't trust Facebook to do it...<p>The author of the article hasn't completely thought this through though. He's saying it's shit work which Facebook automates for you but then he goes on to say relationships are complicated and some people are in overlapping "circles."<p>He shoots himself in the foot right there. Facebook's auto-populated groups can't figure out the complicated nature of our relationships with people. I have many shades of friends and people who have varied interests even within those shades of friends. It's too hard for an algorithm to be able to deduce this very human aspect of relationships.
This article makes no sense... You are rightly pointing out that it takes some effort to maintain your privacy and think about managing your circles of friends on G+ and then you compare it with <i>nothing</i> that provides that ability on Facebook. Yes, thinking is hard. If you are ok with saying everything to everybody then you don't have to do it. But Facebook making a few broad automated groups for you solves none of the problems you describe... How does Facebook know who you want to share your drinking stories with? At least Google puts it up front and makes it part of the whole fabric of their product... you always think about circles... just like in freaking real life.
Totally disagree. First, if you don't want to categorize, then don't--use one big circle. I actually want to have fine-grained control over who I publish to, and Facebook's auto-discovered groups touted in the article don't do it for me. The whole "Don't embrace the shit work" is not relevant either because you can't judge the value of a product by people who don't use it productively. BTW, Most time spent on Facebook period isn't REAL work. This is precisely why I don't have a Facebook account and don't spend tons of time on Google+. But circles are crucial to my use of Google+, and Facebook's lack of a good implementation of the idea is the reason I never used it.
This is why I don't have any interest in buying an Android phone: everyone I know who has one, all the excitement I hear about is their fancy keyboard replacement, or the aftermarket launcher they found to replace the sluggish stock one. Now, I do understand the appeal, if that's what you want to tinker with. I tinker with Volkswagens — I know they're not the finest car I could get my hands on. But when it comes to a smartphone, I'd rather buy the best thing in the store. Even if you're excited that your platform gives you the "freedom" to replace its crappy stock components, that doesn't negate the fact that it's just the freedom to do shit work. So, y'know, flame away.
And yet I still have to explicitly click the 'Mark all notifications as read' button after reading, and closing a pull request on github...<p>Edit: That probably came across more snarky than I intended. The point was that this is easily said, but hard to do right.
Just bc some people are lazy it doesn't mean that there isn't a sub of people that equally value the outcome of their so called shit work and would seek an alternative to the product if it didn't have the features.<p>Motivation is a big factor as well. G+ the motivation is vague, what benefit do you really gain? I know a bunch of people that jumped on Facebook's lists bc of privacy concerns and desire to limit dissemination of their content to unwanted people. For them their privacy >> a base amount of "shit work"... so author not quite right
Or at least make it fun (game).<p>Or make it more valuable. If being on specific Twitter lists drove more followers or was perceived to be important then getting people to put you on specific lists would be important.<p>But it isn't. Now.
Twitter Lists may not be popular, for exactly the reasons you describe, but they're really useful for two purposes: if you follow a LOT of people (for whatever reason), you can use Twitter for 'people whose posts I actually want to read' and if you use it for news consumption, you can make lists for that. I use it especially for the latter; being someone who follows iOS jail breaking, 99% of the time, Twitter is the original source for all of the news related to that.
(Sorry for hijacking)<p>In the new GitHub project page (e.g. <a href="https://github.com/cocos2d/cocos2d-iphone" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cocos2d/cocos2d-iphone</a>), it really took me some times to figure out where is the DOWNLOAD button..Please put the download button back to the top right area (next to the watch/fork buttons), and don't give your users shit work... Thank you!<p>(Btw, I agree what you said in your article!)
I think the list scope and features differ with respect to the nature of the type of followers. Twitter is a broadcast medium. Thus, Twitter lists are very different than Google+ Circles which are asynchronous sharing vs. asynchronous follow. There are also 2 types of shit work:<p>1. List Creation<p>2. List Maintenance<p>These are two different activities that in different networks require varying attention and utility out of the effort.
I agree. Something I said a few months ago:<p>I think most people have relatively clear friend/work boundaries, but even then I encountered a few "Hmmm" moments when putting people in circles. I suspect that most people don't actually want to group the people in their social network - it can take a surprising amount of introspection. Time will tell if that's true.
This is similar to the problem that Picasa has. Their facial recognition technology is really cool, but the work that I need to go through is so immensely tedious that I stopped bothering. Having to approve tens of thousands of faces just doesn't work. And then if you move the photo directory, you lose everything.
Alittle OT, but the thing that struck me while reading is that organizing should be a means to and end and not the end itself.<p>If you organize to speed up your "real work" great. If you organize to organize, that's shit work.<p>I'm not sure what category g+ circles are in though..
Is organizing your bookshelf in iBooks shit work? After reading the article, I'm sure the author would classify it as such. But Apple is smart enough to figure this stuff out. In fact, they're experts at it. What's Apple's reasoning?
Funny, how soon we forget that shit work is what Myspace was all about. That was the use case. Typing in a giant, unstructured list of your favorite artists or installing some way-too-busy image as your profile background in order to impress your friends was the highlight of the "social network" as it existed in 2004.<p>People, mostly women in my experience, loved that "shit work" the same way they loved putting on makeup or shopping for uncomfortable clothes.<p>Some work is enjoyable. People do it for fun. Like gardening, or knitting, or cooking. I believe social networks are kind of like that, for at least some subset of the population. Privacy probably shouldn't be that way, but sadly, I think we all know how scarce people are who actually care about their privacy.
Peter Drucker said something along the lines of "there's no greater form of waste than doing that which shouldn't be done at all with great efficiency."<p>Google Circles is an elegant solution to the wrong problem.
Having people manually set up circles is an O(n^2) solution. Having people join circles, is an O(n) solution.<p>Not exploiting that circles are (approximately) equivalence classes is borderline criminal
it's all in the sell, as Tom Sawyer realized.<p>Our app "Groups" is praised by people who can use it to ... organize their contacts :)<p>Guess what's next ... a social network.<p><a href="http://qbix.com/GROUPS" rel="nofollow">http://qbix.com/GROUPS</a>
For one, I don't really feel like the expletive in the title helped his cause at all. A better title would have been "Facebook suggests groupings of your friends for you!"<p>I also thought his example was contrived. I mean, is there anyone who's so worried about their social networks that they will hem and haw over whether someone is a coworker or drinking buddy or whatever? And if there is someone like that, well thank goodness Google+ supports their neuroses!
Don't like Lists? Don't use them. I have almost a dozen lists on Facebook and I use them extensively (as if they're Circles basically). The only annoying thing is that Facebook decides to change my default publication privacy every time I publish to a specific list.<p>I don't understand, are the features themselves bad? Who's forcing you to use Twitter lists, or Facebook lists, or even Circles?
The main reason that drove me to delete my G+ account was the way circles were managed. I had done pretty well so far with 300+ people in my circles but then made the mistake of importing some shared lists into pre-configured lists and ended up with a bunch of grannies posting in my Node.js circle. To comb through, curate and modify a 600+ user circle proved to be way too much shit work than I was willing to do, so I just went ahead and deleted the account.<p>And I didn't even begin to address the amount of shit content replicated across all of my social media accounts by the same people.