Doing life in software is hard

Google+ is like a VCR. I know exactly what I can do with it. But I cannot figure out how. Maybe I’m slower in the head now, but I remember within minutes I was using Orkut in the same way that I would always use it. Ditto Facebook. Then again, it was probably because they’re such simple, single-textured attempts at replicating real connections. + is more ambitious.

+ is supposed to be the notFacebook network. The gentleman hero that gives back to the meanings of ‘social’ and ‘share’ the nuance they had lost for the last five years. To create social circles of people that really matter to you. To share with them pictures, plans, numbers, confessions that couldn’t make it to Facebook. To boldly go…, so to speak.

But now I find myself being ‘added’ by the same people I’d spent time weeding out of my Facebook friends in an attempt to create those private spaces that + was supposed to let me create in the first place. I herded the party out the back only to have them stagger in the front door.

And what does ‘added’ by someone mean? Would I begin seeing things they shared? Would they see what I shared? Was I part of circles I didn’t know about? Frustratingly, for a network that was supposed to let you create social connections on your terms, I couldn’t even refuse to be ‘added’. Logging in to +, for now at least, seems like walking into a party blindfolded.

But you can retreat into your own circles, can’t you? Yes and No. Maybe I’m the social weirdo here, but I can’t tell just what my today-in-real-life-circles are. I mean I can group/circle the guys from school, the folks from IBM, my first roommates, my then-close friends at IIMK. Each group corresponds to people in distinct phases of my life, people that have remained prominent as the others have faded.

The group reveals itself only after the phase has passed.

And then it also strikes me. That I can only recollect a single group for each phase should tell me something – I really _belonged_ to only one group at a time. It tells me that groups like ‘work’ and ‘family’ and ‘cousins’ and daily commute gang’ and such are really just only contexts for interactions. You can force-create + circles for them, but they’re really freeform amoeba-like shapes, and will change. Not even snap, just thin out at points and separate into other blobs without much emotional ado. Attempts to share ‘stuff’ with them on services like + will peter out in weeks. Or days. I mean what would you share with your ‘work’ circle that you wouldn’t share publicly on Facekut? And how long would you keep sharing with ‘cousins’? Google weakly suggesting ‘Acquaintances’ as a possible option demonstrates just how hard it is to find more than one meaningful, binding circle in your life.

Maybe I don’t get it. It meaning having real-life connections. Maybe + is really a move-to-the-next-curve improvement in social networks, and I’m a bottom-of-the-curve hermit.

Or maybe doing life in software really is hard.