The circles in Google+ are a good step in the right direction. Maintaining multiple accounts in Facebook so that I can separate technical posts from ‘I do have a life away from computers’ posts is annoying. Circles give me the separation but the focus is wrong.
Social circles form around roles that I play in life, as a father to my children, a colleague to people at work, as an ex-class mate to those I used to go to school with, a Manchester United supporter to English Premier League fanatics, and so on.
Each of theses roles presents me partially and slightly differently. I naturally reveal different items of data to different groups and some roles that I play have additional items of data that are specific to those roles. For example, work colleagues know and use my work e-mail address and are unaware of any other e-mail addresses. Others use my personal e-mail address and do not use my work e-mail address. As an avid Facebook Scrabble player, my wife has stats about wins and word scores that are specific to her in that role. To those that know me informally, I am Steve. To my children I am Dad. To readers of my book, I am Stephen R. Palmer, so even my name changes according to the role I play.
So rather than explicitly forming circles of people I know as in Google+, I want to create roles that I play, make visible the data I want to make visible for each of those roles, and associate people to those roles accordingly.
From a software analysis and design perspective, the modelling in colour technique points to all this nicely.
