Why Is This Person Following Me on Google+?: A Suggestion
If you’re like me and on Google+ odds are you have people who have added you to their circles that you don’t know. I actually don’t mind if people I don’t know add me to their circles (Twitter has desensitized me to this) but I don’t want to share certain personal information with them.
One of the nice things about Google+ is that I can very easily not share any of my updates with such people. With two clicks I can add or remove which circles see my updates. This gives me better control than Twitter where you cannot make this decision on a per post basis. It also allows me to not share with anyone who adds me to their circles (equivalent to the Twitter follow) but I don’t add to mine (follow back) or who I do add to a circle but choose not to share that update with their circle.
To me Google+’s model for adding ‘friends’ cuts a median between the Twitter and Facebook models. Friending someone does not require their approval, as Facebook does, and sharing with people is not 100% public (with the exception of private accounts) as Twitter does.
But there’s still a gap that isn’t covered when someone you don’t know follows you. These people are total strangers whose names (required in Google+) you don’t recognize.
What I’d like to see when someone I don’t know adds me to a circle is a reason why I should follow them. I don’t want to go to their profile, read whatever they have public and make a decision based on that. That takes actual work on my part. What would be better is something similar to LinkedIn‘s approach of asking the follower to specify how they know the person they’re following. Just add a second column of checkboxes (next to the circle column of checkboxes) that says things like “following your twitter/blog”, “current/former colleague” and similar choices that are just specific enough to let the person being followed know how the follower knows them but general enough to not clutter the interface. With this information I can add such people to specific Circles (or not, as I choose) and share only the updates that I feel are pertinent to our relationship.
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