Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+
Venue
Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), ACM, New York, NY (2012), pp. 1065-1074
Publication Year
2012
Authors
Sanjay Kairam, Michael J. Brzozowski, David Huffaker, Ed H. Chi
BibTeX
Abstract
Online social networks have become indispensable tools for information sharing, but
existing ‘all-or-nothing’ models for sharing have made it difficult for users to
target information to specific parts of their networks. In this paper, we study
Google+, which enables users to selectively share content with specific ‘Circles’
of people. Through a combination of log analysis with surveys and interviews, we
investigate how active users organize and select audiences for shared content. We
find that these users frequently engaged in selective sharing, creating circles to
manage content across particular life facets, ties of varying strength, and
interest-based groups. Motivations to share spanned personal and informational
reasons, and users frequently weighed ‘limiting’ factors (e.g. privacy, relevance,
and social norms) against the desire to reach a large audience. Our work identifies
implications for the design of selective sharing mechanisms in social networks.
