Getting Started with Google+ – Part 2

Once you have some basic circle structure in place, you are going to want to start populating them. Since Google+ is so new and your circle of total friends is much larger than the subset of that circle that is already on Google+, I found a combination of adding “A listers” (people who contribute a lot to the Google+ community and are widely followed) and personal contacts was best for me.

Google+ uses Gmail contacts as a starting point to suggest possible friends. If you go to the Find and Invite tab you will see the people from your Gmail contacts list who already have Google+ profiles as well as those you can add who currently aren’t on Google+.

I created a circle called “People I might know” and dragged everyone into that. I’ve found some interesting reconnections that way as many people I hadn’t heard from in a while added me into a circle when they were notified that I had added them. Unfortunately, Google does prevent you from adding more than 5000 people total so this wouldn’t work for someone with a lot of contacts.

There’s some discussion within the community as to whether the Twitter convention of following back is appropriate. I personally think the “social handshake” is a human nature thing, and will probably pick up on Google just as it has on Twitter despite those who are trying to prevent it. It just turns on people too much to see the list of people who have added them.

Since circles are so easy to work with, why not spread the love while you can? Your incoming stream basically duplicates the functionality of this “People who have added me” circle without needing any updating, so you lose nothing if you choose not to do as I did.

One other reason not to is for image purposes. If you are concerned about the number of people listed on your “In your circles” section on your profile, however, you can edit that so that just the circles you want appear there.

I come down on the side of spreading the circle love, even if some think I follow too many people. Comments on this policy are welcome.

Now, here’s a list of my “Big Names in Tech” circle: