Circles is +Google‘s answer to online sharing. Google has made it really easy to share the right things with the right people in your life, with Google+.
The basic paradigm of Circles is that you’d typically put people in different circles, depending on how you know them, or what your interests are.


For example, you’d typically want to place people in your family in your “Family” circle. This way, when you share a photo of your cousin, little Timmy; you’d naturally select the “Family” circle and only your family will see the photo, and no one else.
Getting Started
You’ll see Find People on the navigation ribbon to the left-hand side of Google+.
As a new user to Google+, you’ll have a small set of pre-made Circles to get you started. You can use these as a base to build upon, or you can remove them if you want. A seasoned user may have 20 or more Circles set up, but it’s all up to how you use Google+. There’s no right or wrong way.
Adding people to your Circles
Organising Your Circles
Start off simple
- Family
- Friends
- Co workers
- Acquaintances
- Following
If you already have people in circles, move them to the relevant ones. If they don’t fit in a circle, create a new one. I would advise against very specific circles though, for various reasons, one being that it would be harder to organize in the long-term.
Filter by Circles
Now that your circles are nice and tidy, you can filter your stream by circles on the desktop and on the mobile app.
Filtering on the desktop

To filter on the desktop, you’ll see a tabbed bar at the top of the home stream, this displays your circles. You’ll find 4 on the tab, the rest will be hiding in the “More” drop-down menu.
Filtering on your mobile device
Filtering is easy on mobile devices too! Just tap the “All circles” drop-down menu to see all the circles you’ve created, as well as the Nearby and What’s Hot streams.

Circle Sliders


Sharing Circles

When you share a circle, other people can view the people in that circle and add them in one or two clicks. It’s definitely an underrated feature.
Now that you have your Circles set up, you can start hanging out with your friends and other faculty members. The next post will detail how to start a hangout.