Google’s foray into social networking finally took shape in the form of Google Plus. It was launched in private test mode a couple of days ago has really captured everyone’s attention. Google Plus features a platform to share your posts, photos, and videos with your social circles, apart from providing cool options to hang out with them. In this post, lets find out about Google Circles and how Google Circles works.
About Google Circles
A feature that involves creating specific circle of friends to interact and share personal information with. Your circle of friends may be family, drink buddies, book enthusiasts, or yoga group. When you add someone to a circle, they will appear on your public profile. You can share stuff with them and see what they’re sharing, but both parties will not be able to see which circle of friends each of them belong to.
The Google + Circles Interface
Clean, Efficient, Beautiful, Interactive, and Fun are the words that spring in mind. Easy to use with drag and drop actions making adding friends to circles a breeze. You can even expand your contact list by adding friends from Yahoo! and Hotmail in a few mouse clicks.
How to Create and Add Contacts to Google + Circle
1. Login to your Google + account.
2. On the top- navigation menu, click Circles.
3. The Google + Circles page displays 4 circles by default; Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following. Click the names to rename the circle, edit the description, or delete the circle.
4. Hover the mouse pointer over the first circle and click the Create a Circle link. Alternatively, you can simply drag contacts to the circle to create a new circle.
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5. Enter the name and description, add new contacts, and click Create empty circle.
You can select multiple names to add to a circle. Just click each name to select them. If you have already added someone to a circle, you will not be able to add them again to the same circle. And, you can add a person to multiple circles too.
Which Friends Where?
If you want to know which circle of friends your contacts belong to, here’s what you need to do.
Hover the mouse pointer over the name tile, and the circles they’re in will glow. At the same time a pop up box will be displayed indicating which circles they belong to.
How Many Friends are Visible?
At any given time you can see the names of 13 people in a circle. If you need to find a specific person, click the circle and type the name in the Search in this circle box.
Who can see Your Google + Circles?
When you share something with people in a circle, others in the circle with whom you’ve shared stuff may be able to see the shared info. The names and photos of people in your circles, people who have added you to their circles, and suggestions to add other people to your circle will be displayed to the right of the screen.
How to Add Contacts to your Google + Circle
Google + contacts include all your Gmail contacts, contacts from other Google products, and links and accounts you’ve added to your profile. You can also get you Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and other contacts, by linking them to your Google profile.
What are Extended Circles?
Best explained with an example. Let’s say Jane is in your circle of friends and Tom is in Jane’s circle of friends but not yours. If Jane makes Tom’s profile public, he becomes part of the extended circle. So anything you share with Jane automatically gets shared with Tom as well.
Final Thoughts
The world has not seen anything like this before. Google + Circles gives confidence to the user about privacy of data, is really easy to use, has fun and interactive elements and makes you want to stay connected ALL THE TIME.
Ravi Shankar says
July 5, 2011 at 8:21 pmThanks for the detailed info eddie have recently joined Google+ and these info you provided will for sure help me in using it better..