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| Empty Seats by Daniel Foster, Some Rights Reserved |
This past week, +David Oldenburg and +Christine DeGraff hosted a debate about circles shared across the Google+ network. The debate featured +Shawn Manaher, +Randy Hilarski, +John Skeats and +Keith Bloemendaal. The debate last just over an hour and is available to view on YouTube.
Through watching the video, you can see that there were several comments by viewers throughout the presentation. During the presentation, all of the participants did a tremendous job of keeping their cool, presenting their ideas and contradicting opinions. However, I didn't leave the debate learning anything, or taking on a new perspective.
Debates are an opportunity to challenge the way people think. They are a forum to exchange very differing opinions in such ways that make people question their own beliefs. Unfortunately, the debate of shared circles was presented as only having two possible use cases: gaming the system, or providing unique, focused and curated groups of individuals.
I will be the first to admit, that at the beginning of Google+, shared circles were a necessary component of finding who to follow and growing an audience, especially for the "nobodies" out there like me. However, even then, circles were shared based on the active participation of users. Google+ers were looking for anyone to follow that logged in more than once a week to keep their stream hopping and discovering new and sometimes interesting things.
As the network grew and the prevalence of the Suggested Users List started to level out the acceleration of shared circles, an interesting thing happened: people started to develop communities within the community before we even had the Communities feature. I think the best example of this was the group of people that used public Hangouts on a regular basis. You probably know quite a few of them too: +matthew rappaport, +Hermine Ngnomire, +Robert Anderson and +Amanda Blain, just to name a few.
Over time, circles would continue to be shared by the "power" users to help new users find interesting people that posted on a regular basis. +Robert Scoble used them to help showcase bloggers, photographers and technology pundits. +Mike Elgan used them to experimenting with social-platform blogging (#BlogsofAugust) and others used them to share their treasured discoveries from months of platform use.
In the last year, the concept of "snowball" sharing has become common place. A small circle with well known power users would circulate around with the promise of inclusion if you took social action on the post (through +1, reshare or commenting). Users were encouraged to take the circle, add themselves, and reshare with their audiences.
It was easy for users with small audiences to fall prey to these circles because the incentive to grow their audience was so huge. With just a few simple clicks, they would somersault into a circle that would continue to snowball and grow in size. What these users didn't realize though, was that as the circle continued to grow in size, it would shrink in value and relevance. What everyone was left with were 100's of irrelevant circles and a bunch of schemes to continue the trend clogging up their stream. In frustration, many of them (I assume) stopped using Google+.
The reason the "Great Circle Debate" wasn't that great, is that we already know both sides of the debate. You can either carefully curate circles filled with people you closely follow, or you can participate in a snowball circle, where the only one to benefit is the person promising you loads of engagement and interaction.
+Mark Traphagen really nailed it this morning in talking about relevance and how your authority ranking trumps the number of people that follow you, or the amount of interaction you have on your posts. It's not about how much, how many or how often, but who's behind it.
If you want to chase numbers and make yourself sick of a network that can offer you endless opportunity, start a snowball. Heck, start an avalanche. Just remember, someone's going to get hurt.