About Circles

About Circles

Google+ Circles helps you organize everyone according to your real-life social connections--say, 'family,' 'work friends,' 'music buddies,' and 'alumni'. Then, you can share relevant content with the right people, and follow content posted by people you find interesting. For example, you might post an announcement about your engagement and show it only to people in your friends and family circles, or maybe you see a post from the circle you created for your book club that there's a recent article on your favorite author.
You can also decide to customize your personal profile information for your circles. For example, your contact details, location, and relationship information would be visible to your friends circle, while your employment history and education would be visible to your alumni association circle.

Removing people from your circles

It's easy to change who's in your circles.
To remove someone from all of your circles:

1. Click the Circles icon at the top of the page.
2. Find the person who you want to remove and click on their name.
3. Click Remove at the top of the window.

To remove someone from a specific circle:

1. Click the Circles icon at the top of the page.
2. Select the circle you want to remove the person from.
3. Choose who you'd like to remove from the circle and click Remove. (You can also remove people from a circle by mousing over the circle and dragging their photo out.)

When you remove people from your circles, a confirmation will drop down from the top of the page indicating that the action was successful. You'll have the option to remove this person from your Google Contacts address book. (This may affect other devices that rely upon Google Contacts, like a mobile device.)
If you no longer want to interact with someone, you can block them. While this doesn't remove that person from your contacts, blocking someone will remove them from all your circles and limit the ways in which they can interact with you on Google+.

Who can see your circles

When you place people into circles, or when you share with your circles, we won't disclose the names of the circles people are in. People in circles that you share with may be able to see some of the others with whom that content was also shared. Learn more about seeing who a post was shared with.
Name and photos of people in your circles as well as people who have added you to their circles will show on the side of your profile.

People suggestions

On the side of the stream and on the Find and Invite tab, you may see suggestions for people Google+ thinks you might know. Suggestions could be generated by:

• Your mutual connections with people on Google products such as Gmail.
• Interaction you’ve had with others on Google products.
• The links you've added to your profile.
• The connected accounts you've linked on your Google Account.

While viewing your suggestions in the stream, you can add suggested people to your circles by clicking Add to circles next to their name. If you don’t know a suggested person or if you don’t want to add them to a circle, mouse over the person's name and click the X.
You can view all of your suggestions at once by clicking Show all. This will take you to the Find and Invite tab where you can edit your circles.

Extended circles

When you share something in the stream, you might notice an option to share with your extended circles. Your extended circles are like your circles' circles. Content shared with your extended circles could appear in the Incoming stream of people who are one degree removed from you with certain conditions--namely that we’ll only include people whose association with people you know is already visible to you.
For example, let's say Nediva is in one of your circles, and Jadon is in one of Nediva's circles. You don't know Jadon and he's not in any of your circles. If Nediva chooses to have Jadon visible on her profile among the people in her circles, and you choose to share with your extended circles, your content could appear in both Nediva and Jadon's streams.
You aren't able to see a complete list of the people included in your extended circles--it's a collection of people that's frequently changing.

Delete a circle

You can delete the default circles (Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following) as well as the circles you create.
To delete a circle:

1. Sign in to Google+ .
2. Click your full name or email address in the Google+ bar, then click Edit circles.
3. Click the circle you'd like to delete.
4. Click Delete this circle.
5. When you see the 'Delete circle?' prompt, click OK.

Your circles will also be deleted if you delete your Google Account.

When you delete a circle, everything previously shared with those people will no longer be visible on the Posts tab of your profile (unless you shared the same content with another circle they're in). The content will still be visible in the former circle members' streams.

Circles

You share different things with different people. So sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself - just like real life.