Google+ Circles: Understanding Your Public vs Private Social Networks

Google+ uses the Circles metaphor to help you organize your contacts. But before you go off building large networks of people and randomly adding strangers to your network, get a grip on what you want to make PUBLIC vs PRIVATE. Do you really want those party pics showing up as part of your LinkedIN profile? Do your private images get shared via Friends of Friends settings in Facebook? What do these settings look like in Google+? (That’s a topic we should cover in a future post.)

But getting a grip on your Public vs Private networks is a good first step. Before you make the decision to join everything with Google+ take stock of how you share now. I am keeping Facebook as my “Private” network. (Kinda funny, considering Facebook’s privacy settings are some of the worst in the business. But I keep mine as tight as possible: Friends Only on everything.)

public vs private on Google+ Circles — Click to view full-screen on Slideshare.net

It’s always good to remember that anything you share electronically can be reshared without your permission. If it can be seen on a screen it can be screen captured and posted on a roadside billboard. If you share publicly, know that the information in the cloud stays in the cloud, forever. If you share privately, now that “privacy” is a concept that Facebook and now Google+ will change on a regular basis. It may say privacy settings, but it’s all public. Don’t share if you’re not prepared to share with everybody.

The Social Media 101 Summary: Know who you are sharing with, and know that they can reshare where ever they want, without telling you.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2011/07/google-circles/

This presentation is available as a downloadable PPT file from Slideshare.net: Google+: Private vs Public

A few additional posts that may be of interest: