To be honest, Facebook isn’t shedding any tears. I was barely active in Facebook anyway. Facebook has been a convenient Rolodex to use from time to time. My wall is closed except for posts from this blog, and I don’t post pictures.
It is not that I don’t like people. More specifically, it isn’t that I don’t like YOU people. It’s just that, well, my social circles don’t all overlap.
What do you do when your boss, or an associate requests you as a friend on Facebook? In fact, it is a bit messy whenever anybody requests to be your friend on Facebook. Refusing is dicey, and ignoring it requires a little white lie of “oh I don’t check often.” Let’s face it, it was ok when only the current “in” techie crowd was on Facebook when it first started, but now EVERYONE is on Facebook. My boss… my mom. Heck I’m sure my niece will get an account soon. I don’t always want to share the same thing with my buddy from college as I would my parents or my niece.
Google+ has an answer, which is to immediately put people into “Circles” of friends, and then allow you to share anything with certain circles only. This fits perfectly with how I share things in my life. Some random picture will go to my friends, my pictures of my family will go (only) to my family, and my boss and work associates can get something reasonably clean and civilized, like a picture from a new restaurant.
The reality is that my all my social contacts are not the same. It’s not that anyone is more or less important to me, but simply the fact that the stuff I share with a four year old family member is different from those that I share with thirty somethings at a tailgate, which are different from things I share with people with which I do business.
Google+ simply fits my reality better.
For now.
edit:
A nice review by David Pogue at the the New York Times here:
Thoughts and Thoughts 