ReadWriteWeb has confirmed details Google’s development of a major new social network called Circles. The service will offer photo and video sharing along with status updates that can be sent to specific, customizable social circles. Everything users share on Circles will be shared only with the most appropriate circle of social contacts in their lives, not with all your contacts in bulk. Circles may be shown off at an event co-hosted the ACLU, an organization focused on privacy and the liberties it affords. It may not be a big public launch yet, but it's clear that this is a major product in the works at the very least.
School and work, friends and family, the sacred and the profane; we've always been able to communicate different things to different people in different circumstances. Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks have collapsed all those contexts into one big bucket. We speak to our "friends" all at once, no matter what we might want to say to one group of people or another. And thus we often feel less comfortable than we might saying anything at all.
Google is expected to be in the final stages of development and may be showing off a preview at the SXSW conference .
Update: Google has said they will not announce anything. ReadWriteWeb learned from those suspected to be working on the project that it may not be under development currently after-all.
Where Facebook groups and Twitter lists have failed, Google Circles may be able to rope-in a massive audience of users seeking a more personal, organized network with more freedom of expression.
The lead user experience researcher for Google, Paul Adams published a very interesting presentation that points out the fundamental flaws of Facebook’s social network experience.
on Google Circles as Facebook’s tactics for world domination are continually shown as less than honorable. I also can’t wait to be empowered to share unique and relevant content to many diverse social circles.
Google Circles should prove to be a great communication medium for personal and business networking and marketing
Google Tries Again :- Google has launched many different social efforts over the years but has remained far behind Facebook and Twitter in its efforts. Social networking is an important technology for Google to find success with as it's a key way that people spend time online and that targeted advertisements are delivered to those people.
Google Buzz felt overbearing and bolted on. It also got privacy terribly, terribly wrong. Google Wave was more confusing than collaborative. Google's Open Social interoperable widget platform was hugely hyped as a distributed Face book killer, but it now primarily focused on enterprise social networks.
Reports emerged last June that Google has been working on a secret social project called Google Me.
In December a screenshot was leaked to techCrunch showing a new toolbar item on Google.com called "Loop." (Loop seems similar to Circles - I think Circles is better.) I believe that Circles will be a toolbar level service as well.
It's hard to think of a stronger angle to take than support for contextual integrity of communication and conversation, of personas in social networking.
Google has tried and failed in many other (though not all) social efforts. Bringing some of the best thinking and the best innovators in the world to a new effort to tackle one of the world's biggest problems is very ambitious.
Presuming that the things we're hearing are true (I believe they are), then we'll follow up with in-depth coverage of Google Circles once it's launched. That may be tonight, it may be as far in the future as the Google IO developer conference in two months - but I believe we are going to see at least some parts of it today. More clear than the timing is that this is definitely happening: Google is putting some of its most innovative social thinkers behind a major product called Circles and focused on personas.
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