I think we'll need to teach people how to be "Social" on internet from scratch when G+ hits the masses. Facebook has done a terrible job so far.
Being "Social" doesn't mean being "open", and it has nothing to do with privacy.
The fact you know people doesn't mean you want the world (or anyone of your "Friends") to know it. I mean this has unlimited user cases (except on Facebook) but one could be about "Business" Circles.
Anyway, back to the question, indeed is a setting and even a easy one (good job, again): Network Visibility.
Following people implies at least a very basic interest in what they have to say. You can't follow more than a few hundred people and still keep track of what they're saying (and that's with a low average post count). If you're following thousands you're either a bot or just racking up numbers in which case the follow relationship is totally meaningless.
I would have agreed with you once but now I think that, to a certain extent, maintaining social connections can be a bit like physical fitness. I could say you can't run under a 4 minute mile or a single race of > 100 miles, yet people have and do while almost none of us on HN ever will.
My change of heart has come after 5 years of using Twitter. I could only follow 100 people well at first but somehow it crept up and up. I've had quite a few culls and now I'm at 1000 people I follow and whenever I go through the list I recognize almost every name. It's not quite a 4 minute mile but I've been able to get at least a feel for those 1000 folks and know they're ones I appreciate following.
On Google+, you can quite reasonably follow thousands of others and still keep track of everything your friends and family post, plus the occasional random.
I got sent an invite today. Curious, I followed the link to see what it was like. It told me I wasn't allowed in because my browser was unsupported although of course Firefox was supported. My browser is Debian unstable's Iceweasel. So I gave up and did something else.
I think this perfectly illustrates the trade off of leveraging existing connections. I'm sure this list would be similar for any other "social network" that doesn't launch from scratch and build their user base exclusively by word of mouth.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadSource: https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/status/87321128783192064 (note: he meant "Google account" specifically in reference to "Google Plus account", verified elsewhere).
I think we'll need to teach people how to be "Social" on internet from scratch when G+ hits the masses. Facebook has done a terrible job so far.
Being "Social" doesn't mean being "open", and it has nothing to do with privacy. The fact you know people doesn't mean you want the world (or anyone of your "Friends") to know it. I mean this has unlimited user cases (except on Facebook) but one could be about "Business" Circles.
Anyway, back to the question, indeed is a setting and even a easy one (good job, again): Network Visibility.
For all the imagined rivalry between Jobs and Google, doesn't the iPhone still use Google Maps?
My change of heart has come after 5 years of using Twitter. I could only follow 100 people well at first but somehow it crept up and up. I've had quite a few culls and now I'm at 1000 people I follow and whenever I go through the list I recognize almost every name. It's not quite a 4 minute mile but I've been able to get at least a feel for those 1000 folks and know they're ones I appreciate following.
I got sent an invite today. Curious, I followed the link to see what it was like. It told me I wasn't allowed in because my browser was unsupported although of course Firefox was supported. My browser is Debian unstable's Iceweasel. So I gave up and did something else.