D'oh!

[andrewducker]

I've just realised what Google+ does that Facebook doesn't:

Facebook doesn't allow your status updates to be public.

steer was asking how the circles system in G+ was different to Facebook's friends list system. And the difference is that it's more like LJ's friends lists than Facebook's. Which is to say that, like Twitter, you can 'follow' anyone, even if they don't want to be followed. And like LJ you can post to a particular circle, a mixture of different circles, all of your circles (the equivalent of friends-only) or make a post public.

And that means that a G+ identity can be used as a public identity as well as for chatting to your friends. And this is something I've not seen on any other social network since LJ came along.

Now, if it only had threaded comments, I'd be happy!

Comments

[andrewducker]

I know, I know, I'm not very smart sometimes.

In my defence, it's not something I've seen discussed much so far.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Indeed. if it had threaded comments and multiple user icons, it would be a reasonable replacement for LJ. if LJ needs replacing. Though I am "following" a fair number of well-known geeks on G+

[steer.livejournal.com]

Facebook does have a weird walled garden thing going on so even though my status updates are set to "everyone" and most of my facebook to be as open as possible, I still cannot be found by a non logged in user (because too many other Richard Cleggs are before me in the results and you have to log in to hone down searches). It's one of the reasons I never really got why people think facebook is obsessed with making information "open" (I suspect it is more public statements by well known owner than technical issues). LJ allows you to be much more open and doesn't allow you to lock down your user info page much for example.

If you know the URL then a non facebook user can see my status page in full but not my wall and there's no way I can allow that either.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yep, it definitely needs threaded comments. I was involved in a discussion on G+ yesterday, checked my email, and had 20 or so comment notifications from other people posting in the same thread that had nothing to do with the discussion. Very irritating.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

A major reason I don't do much with Facebook is that I can't check most people's postings to see if they're saying anything interesting before I friend them.

Threaded comments have their virtues, but they're very annoying unless they have a most recent comments option.

I want trn!

However, LessWrong has an interesting hack. This is presumably only if you're logged in, but when you refresh a comment page, the comments which have come in since you viewed it are bordered in green.