My $0.02: circles are great for managing lists of people, and for sending/filtering notifications. No problem there.
One word of caution: It is very tempting to use circles as an access permission setting. In Google+, for example, I can share a file with my "work" circle. Sounds great, right? Problem is, *my* circles are *my* construct. My work buddy Aaron would see my file, but what if he wants to share it with his colleague - who is not in my circle? Things become difficult. To give Google credit, they do a good job explaining what the permissions on an object are. But it doesn't make it any easier to understand/implement. BTW, Google attempted to solve this problem by making the circles shareable: http://readwrite.com/2011/09/26/google_plus_users_can_now_share_their_circles (but, clearly there were limitations that they had to build in) My personal take - when it comes to sharing, make groups explicit - visible to all participants. A circle can be thought of as a "uni-directional" group - one person is in charge, and that person gets to decide who is named a member of that group. IMO, "bi-directional" groups are more flexible - one or more people may be in charge, but group members can decide if they want to join (for open groups) or leave. Having said that - the ability to share with multiple groups, named users, or a combination thereof is *hugely* valuable. Last thought: "people I am following" is a uni-directional group. "My friends" is a bi-directional group. In OpenSocial land, if I follow you, and you follow me, we're now friends. "Friends" is a reasonable (and very useful) permission level; again, however, it only makes sense to me, the person who started it. Stan Drozdetski MITRE -----Original Message----- From: Franklin, Matthew B. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 6:53 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Rave 465 On 10/16/12 11:44 AM, "Raminderjeet Singh" <[email protected]> wrote: >+1. I liked the idea to extend open social friends like Google+. My >understanding is circles are like attributes to existing friend model. The real question is how to expose this in Shindig. You might need to replace some of the person internals, but should be possible. > > >On Oct 16, 2012, at 10:16 AM, Chris Geer wrote: > >> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 4:32 AM, Aaron Gooch <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Proposal for Rave-465 Person Profile Connections: >>> >>> My team is considering implementing this epic. We have discussed how we >>> want connections to work but would like to get more information from >>>the >>> community. >>> >>> Management of connections: >>> >>> We are proposing a Google+ model of choosing connections with other >>>users >>> and then having the ability to group connections much like Google+. The >>> idea here is that >>> >> >> I like the idea of Google+ circles so that is a good start >> >>> >>> we want to have a way of communicating directly to people on Project X >>>or a >>> group of collegues. Users will be able to connect to any other user, >>>place >>> their connections >>> >>> in groups so that they can easily communicate/share with specific >>>groups. >>> >>> Implementation >>> >>> >>> - Connections are part of the rave core >>> - Friends concept implemented in Shindig following opensocial spec >>> >> >> How does the circles match up with Shindig friends? Do they work >>together >> or are they competing? Do we remove the existing friend concept in Rave? >My understanding is existing friend network can be extended for circle >attribute. Users need to be friends first and then being added to >different circles. >> >> >>> - Each user has zero or more circles. >>> >> >> I assume you mean "Each person has...", any social stuff should be >>attached >> to the person not the user. This is important because we've already >> discussed there might not always be a one-to-one relationship between >>users >> and people. >> >> >>> - Each circle is composed of zero or more users. >>> - Create an api for managing connections >>> - Create a connections page for users to manage their circles. >>> - Create a ³friend² or ³follow² button on the person profile page >>>to >>> create connections >>> >> >> Chris > >Thanks >Raminder
