Google + circles = a ramble

conférence Social Media Club France - Google Plus Circles - a ramble

 

The idea with Google + is to allow people to share like in real life. And in real life, you don’t share everything with everybody. So the “circles”* allow to categorize your contacts according to the groups they belong : family, friends, acquaintances, etc.” explained Google Accounts Managers Pauline Butor and Arnaud Monnier at Tuesday’s Social Media Club France’ workshop focused on Google +’ specificities.

Indeed, in « real life », we adapt our communication according to frames of experience (E. Goffman, 1974). Thus, we don’t act the same whether we are talking to our mother, husband, child, boss, friend. Think of it if we did – life would be a joke.

Yet, what Goffman describes is less about categorizing and classifying our social experiences in various frames, rather adapting our own frame to the interactions in accordance.  The frame is not set, it evolves consequently.

Google + allows for you to change your “circles”, as an acquaintance may evolve to becoming a friend, or even family. But there again, isn’t the subtlety of the boundaries between who is really a friend, and whom is just an acquaintance, what is really part of the attraction?

Such as Russian dolls, social web users compose the perimeter of their audience through successive extension. According to the platform, they articulate strong links (family, close friends), late strong links (friends and lovers rediscovered on social networks), contextual links (colleagues, friends from sport or singing classes), opportunity links (vague acquaintances, our acquaintances of acquaintances) and virtual links (people met on the internet and who share a common interest). […] The quest of an enlarged visibility on the social web introduces an opportunistic logic, not to say calculating, in experienced sociability. Moreover, it should be seen as an enlarging and a diversification of the spheres of interest through which individuals build their identity.” (Cardon, 2010)**.

Thus, classically with online social networks, you may find out that your favorite musician is playing in a secret location, that an acquaintance has professional connections your interested in, that your boss like rock climbing so as yourself. Equally, a brand may find out that its customers invented a new hit recipe for one of their products (marmite and cheese on bread?), or that its hit technology is used in various very original ways by the users. Off of this information, a brand may build marketing strategies, or maintain an intimate and loyal relation with its customers.

It is certainly a move from one of the kings of aggregation to put information confidentiality forward as one of the keys of social networking on the internet. With no way to check in on their contacts’ private details, many businesses and news companies have yet to find a way of putting Google + to play/work in their web strategies. But Google+ is still young (only six months old, born on the 28th of june 2011), and its identity is yet to mature from the keys words it was born with in hand.

At Tuesday’s Social Media Club France debate, Google raised interest in a few unplanned practices that are growing to become popular on Google+ (related to hangouts and there use for business whether in internal or external communication; or to the circles and the original uses they are given). Moreover, a few of us were astonished to note that many of our early and most active Google + contacts happen to be usually non web-savvy people such as my mom, your dad, and his random anti-internet colleague.

Give Google + another six months and it may have an identity all to itself that will give it it’s own reasons for being amongst the anthology of social networks. It may have finally moved away from comparisons with Facebook, thanks to the early adopters having done it all by themselves.

And what will a social network DIYed by our parents look like? There’s a competition to launch. I’m placing bets.

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References:

Cardon D. (2010) La Démocratie internet, promesses et limites. Coll. La république des idées, Paris: Seuil.

Goffman E. (1974) Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience,London: Harper and Row.

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* “Circles” are what Google + encourages you to classify your contacts in accordingly. A Google + account comes with three preset circles: “Family”, “Friends”, “Acquaintances”. You may then create more circles according to your personal classification.

** original version: “A la manière des poupées russes, les utilisateurs du web social composent donc le périmètre de leur public par extensions successives. Différemment selon les plateformes, ils articulent liens forts (famille, amis proches), ex-liens forts (amis et amours retrouvés sur les réseaux sociaux), liens contextuels (collègues, amis du club sportif ou de la chorale), liens d’opportunité (connaissances vagues ou connaissances de connaissances) et liens virtuels (personnes rencontrées sur le net qui partagent avec eux quelque intérêt commun). (…) La quête d’une visibilité élargie sur le web social introduit une logique opportuniste, voire calculatrice, au sein de la sociabilité vécue. Mais il faut surtout y avoir un élargissement et une diversification des sphères d’intérêt au travers desquels les individus construisent leur identité.” (Cardon, 2010)

Billet initialement publié sur : http://digitalwanderlusting.tumblr.com/