The Probation Circle – More fun with Google Plus

When google plus went public my influx of people adding me to their circles exploded, which was pretty cool. I can tell by a lot of the posters in my own stream that I was not alone. So far I’ve been pretty liberal about adding people but I quickly found out that as someone post came up in my stream I was met with questions.

Uh oh, this one seems to be posting about feeding her cat a lot. Or was that her before?

This guy is posting stuff from his wife’s etsy page, do I really want that?

This lady has nothing in her profile but the pic is super cool . . .

Is this guy being a jerk or just opinionated?

The problem was I had no good way to remember who was who as my stream updates almost constantly and I do want to give the group some latitude. I don’t care if you post your wive’s toaster covers now and again, but if that is all you post, I’d rather not have you in my stream.

So wednesday I created the “Probation” circle. When someone posts something I’m iffy about or even if their profile gives me pause, I throw them in the regular circles but I also put them in the probation circle. That way if I run across them a second time I know that I had already flagged them as questionable and can remove them without worrying that I’m going to miss out on content that I do want.

Good story, the end.

Tags: circles, google plus, google+, googleplus