Circles are not enough
Google+ Circles (and Facebook Friend Lists) only solve half of the problem. It is great for privacy, but not for relevancy. If I post a link to an article about programming, I don't want to limit it to a small group of people like "Tech Friends" because it's not a privacy issue. If I forget to put someone in that circle they won't see the link I shared. If I post it to "Public" then everyone sees my link, even though half my followers don't care about programming.
This problem is sort of solved now by having multiple social networks. I post random thoughts and tech-stuff on Twitter, more family-oriented stuff on Facebook, check-in on Foursquare, dump photos on Picasa, share links on Google Reader & delicious, and long posts on posterous... all because no single service can handle it all intelligently.
Not all posts are created equal. A check-in at starbucks should not be treated the same as long blog post explaining something important. I would post a lot more if I knew I wasn't going to drown the good stuff with what most people don't care about.
Maybe the solution is for all posts to have categories/tags. Categories that people can hide. Categories that people can follow without becoming my "friend". A good start would be some useful auto-tags... like #photo, #checkin, #share, #video. Then let me tag my own posts. I could mark a post as #programming and not worry about who sees it because they can easily hide all #programming posts if they want. Tech acquaintances can subscribe to only my #programming posts, so they don't have to see #photos of my #dog.
Maybe another solution is to simply group posts into short-term and long-term buckets? A quick thought, a funny link, or a check-in are only really relevant "now". A photo album, detailed blog post, or important announcement should be more prominant and visible for longer.
Some services were on the right track but never quite got there.
- Buzz, FriendFeed, & Facebook allow you to hide posts created by specific apps & services.
- FriendFeed has the ability to post to both your own feed and to "Groups" at once. You can also apply some advanced filtering as a "Saved Search".
- Facebook has some long-term buckets with Notes and Photos.
- Posterous allows multiple blogs/Spaces for a single person, but are too disconnected.
- Some Twitter apps, like TweetDeck, let you hide posts that contain certain words
Google+ Circles and Facebook Friend-Lists give me more control over who sees my posts. What I want is more control over the posts I see.
