Offensive Squid

Okay, I've tried out Google+ for a while, and I'm feeling ambivalent about it as a way to interact with authors and fans. I think I prefer author blogs for reading their long form thoughts, and then some other channel for short random stuff.

Google+ circles (and diaspora aspects, and facebook lists) are annoying in that you can't really have shared discussions on a topic that people subscribe to. maybe they'll roll out something later. I still prefer mailing lists, forums, newsgroups, those types of things.

Lanius said:

What do you mean you can't have shared discussions?

In the sense that it doesn't support the concept of shared circles.

I can great a circle of Peter Watts fans, for example, but there is not a way to have a public circle of Peter Watts fans that I can join to be able to start topics with other self-identified fans.

The g+ circles (and facebook lists) provide a good way for me to post specifically to my contacts in circles for science fiction, programming, or family. helpful for not broadcasting things that would just be noise to some people. (though it's not always clear to me which circles to post to. sometimes I just post to a hand selected group of people)