I have a better question. How many of these people are actually posting? It feels a little pointless to follow a bunch of people who have no public posts.
I've gone through all the links in this thread (at the time of writing) and included only those where I can see posts (i.e more than just uploading a profile photo). I've simply copy/pasted the links from the original submitters into this post. Hope it's useful. (edit: I also put them all in a spreadsheet which anyone can edit http://bit.ly/nBqc8e)
So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family?
That's right, they aren't.
Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.
In all honesty, if these people really care about this, they'll have an account for their "online personality" and a personal account.
See the difference between Facebook fan pages and actual Facebook profiles. Of course, now the problem is that there is no elegant way (currently) to manage 2 G+ accounts...
I've always though that personae-based would be better than circle-based. You could even have people like the former _why who have an entirely separate online presence.
It seems to me that the most active use for G+ at the moment is as a broadcasting system, very much like Twitter. Maybe Google has envisioned this, maybe not. I admit I didn't. I thought Google would have done whatever it takes to promote more intimate and private communication among close friend circles.
But while G+ is arguably a better broadcasting system than Twitter, it is still broken. A tech celeb would love to consistently post tech stuffs, but while this activity satisfies his geeky followers, it would annoy his friends and families. And there is no way a tech celeb can manually add his followers into different circles.
I imagine if G+ fixes this problem, it will completely replace Twitter in no time at all.
One solution is to introduce a concept called Channels.
Suppose I follow DHH. The problem is DHH has a lot of interests, ranging from Ruby, entrepreneurship, to Forbes bashing (DHH fans bear it with me here). Now DHH doesn't know who among his followers cares about which of his interests, but he creates some Channels, namely "Ruby", "Entrepreneurship", "Forbes Bashing", etc anyway, so followers can filter themselves.
Now a Rails guy found DHH's G+ page. He would like to follow DHH, but he doesn't care so much about DHH's financial insight. Now that when he adds DHH to his "Follow" Circle, he can choose to pick some among many DHH's Channels and everyone is happy.
Finally, DHH's "public" posts are only visible to those who specifically added him to the "Follow" circle.
I've been working on an early stage startup which does something very similar to this, although less celebrity focused and more on common circles. It's funny actually, when Google+ happened, I figured they did exactly what we've been working on, but they didn't. Seeing as everyone on HN seems to want something like this now though, it seems to be putting a lot of pressure on.
Sounds like it would work like the feed-anywhere system on WordPress. I could grab the robotics feed from an interesting person at example.com/robotics/feed/ and easily forget that it's actually a competitive crochet blog.
[+] [-] amirmc|14 years ago|reply
I've gone through all the links in this thread (at the time of writing) and included only those where I can see posts (i.e more than just uploading a profile photo). I've simply copy/pasted the links from the original submitters into this post. Hope it's useful. (edit: I also put them all in a spreadsheet which anyone can edit http://bit.ly/nBqc8e)
Guido van Rossum: https://plus.google.com/115212051037621986145/posts
Ian Bicking: https://plus.google.com/104537541227697934010/posts
Michael Foord: https://plus.google.com/u/1/114852031032123777881/posts
Simon Willison: https://plus.google.com/u/1/106366615678321494423/posts
Brett Cannon: https://plus.google.com/u/1/115362263245161504841/posts
Graham Dumpleton: https://plus.google.com/u/1/114657481176404420131/posts
Waldemar Kornewald: https://plus.google.com/u/1/112495598999878465094/posts
Eric Florenzano: https://plus.google.com/u/1/109591387819364984777/posts
Randall Munroe: XKCD. https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts
Matt Cutts: https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts
Brad Fitzpatrick: https://plus.google.com/115863474911002159675/posts
Scott Hanselman: https://plus.google.com/113698589973698283456/posts
Ryan Dahl: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts
Andy Hertzfeld: https://plus.google.com/117840649766034848455/posts
Adrian Holovaty: https://plus.google.com/113607435918549143249/posts
Armin Ronacher: https://plus.google.com/116865269069705863179/posts
Don Stewart: https://plus.google.com/115274377971493973150/posts
Paul Buchheit: https://plus.google.com/111732375221065535359/posts
[+] [-] sssparkkk|14 years ago|reply
That's right, they aren't.
Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
Hopefully, G+ will eventually implement tagging and people can filter out tags they don't like.
[+] [-] suhailsherif|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfxm12|14 years ago|reply
See the difference between Facebook fan pages and actual Facebook profiles. Of course, now the problem is that there is no elegant way (currently) to manage 2 G+ accounts...
[+] [-] wisty|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ResearchShows|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] seri|14 years ago|reply
But while G+ is arguably a better broadcasting system than Twitter, it is still broken. A tech celeb would love to consistently post tech stuffs, but while this activity satisfies his geeky followers, it would annoy his friends and families. And there is no way a tech celeb can manually add his followers into different circles.
I imagine if G+ fixes this problem, it will completely replace Twitter in no time at all.
One solution is to introduce a concept called Channels.
Suppose I follow DHH. The problem is DHH has a lot of interests, ranging from Ruby, entrepreneurship, to Forbes bashing (DHH fans bear it with me here). Now DHH doesn't know who among his followers cares about which of his interests, but he creates some Channels, namely "Ruby", "Entrepreneurship", "Forbes Bashing", etc anyway, so followers can filter themselves.
Now a Rails guy found DHH's G+ page. He would like to follow DHH, but he doesn't care so much about DHH's financial insight. Now that when he adds DHH to his "Follow" Circle, he can choose to pick some among many DHH's Channels and everyone is happy.
Finally, DHH's "public" posts are only visible to those who specifically added him to the "Follow" circle.
[+] [-] NinetyNine|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkr-hn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soilandreyes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scorpion032|14 years ago|reply
Michael Foord (aka voidspace, fuzzyman): https://plus.google.com/u/1/114852031032123777881/posts
Simon Willison: https://plus.google.com/u/1/106366615678321494423/posts
Jannis Leidel: https://plus.google.com/u/1/116135559313623469613/posts
Jesse Noller: https://plus.google.com/u/1/115662513673837016240/posts
Brett Cannon: https://plus.google.com/u/1/115362263245161504841/posts
Graham Dumpleton: https://plus.google.com/u/1/114657481176404420131/posts
Waldemar Kornewald: https://plus.google.com/u/1/112495598999878465094/posts
Brian Rosner: https://plus.google.com/u/1/102458913105606955755/posts
Eric Florenzano: https://plus.google.com/u/1/109591387819364984777/posts
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jonah|14 years ago|reply
Matt Cutts: head of the webspam team at Google. https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts
[+] [-] mindblink|14 years ago|reply
Scott Hanselman's profile, Principal Program Manager @ Microsoft. Prolific online presence: https://plus.google.com/113698589973698283456/posts
[+] [-] andrew_k|14 years ago|reply
Armin Ronacher - creator of Flask (Python web framework) https://plus.google.com/116865269069705863179/posts
[+] [-] zmanian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikcub|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xsltuser2010|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuvadam|14 years ago|reply
I don't get it. Google already has usernames - why not use them?
[+] [-] powerslave12r|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gubatron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heed|14 years ago|reply
Resig - creator of jquery https://plus.google.com/115675748062237570841/posts
[+] [-] ja27|14 years ago|reply
Gina Trapani (Lifehacker): https://plus.google.com/113612142759476883204/posts
Merlin Mann (43folders): https://plus.google.com/100537991844787325512/posts
Marco Arment (Instapaper): https://plus.google.com/110386126391315414323/posts
Tim Bray: https://plus.google.com/107606703558161507946/posts
[+] [-] rakkhi|14 years ago|reply
Bob Rudis: https://plus.google.com/106858596733931987499/posts
Graham Cluley: https://plus.google.com/102593062779602837630/posts
Naked security (Sophos): https://plus.google.com/109804632067529299377/posts
[+] [-] fserb|14 years ago|reply
Ian Bicking: https://plus.google.com/104537541227697934010/posts
Mark Chu-Carroll: https://plus.google.com/102359124322399475449/posts
[+] [-] guelo|14 years ago|reply
Also, just came across this post https://plus.google.com/111379026657101157995/posts/Sirk5KSb... though those recommendations are mostly tech industry and blogger types not really hackers.
[+] [-] tanay46|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meddah|14 years ago|reply
David Pollak Creator of Lift https://plus.google.com/105156943245180312120/posts
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nagnatron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] xtacy|14 years ago|reply