A 2 circle Google+ Migration Strategy for Newbies.

There has been a lot of agonizing over the Google+ circles.   People are trying to sort their "friends" and family and acquaintances into all kinds of groups and overlapping subgroups.  Opinions range about how many busy people will take the time to understand the nuances of the asymmetric circles.  Will this scare people away from trying Google+?

A very simple solution could be as follows

Create 2 circles

1. Former Facebook folks
• These are all the friends and family that you "friended" on FB.  This meant you saw everything they posted, and vice-versa.  - This maybe a good time to clean house ;-)
• This assumes that like the majority of FB users you did not care to select a subgroup of your friends when posting.
• You will immediately start seeing anything these friends post in your stream.
• When posting something you decide if you want it to go out to all your former FB friends.
• When reading your stream, with one click you can convert it to a FB equivalent
2. Former Twitter folks
• These are all the folks you followed on Twitter.
• This will allow you to read all their comments just like in Twitter
• You can post publicly what you would normally post to twitter.

You cannot control who will read your posts.  You can hope that folks you add to your circles will reciprocate.  Then they can read your posts depending on how they filter their stream. 

Now you are all set.

When posting in FB mode, post to just your FB circle

When posting in Twitter mode, post publicly

When reading in FB mode filter by FB circle

When reading in Twitter mode, filter by Twitter circle

As time passes and need arises, start creating subgroups of your major circles.  Periodically check who is adding you to their circles and reciprocate appropriately.  Once all your contacts are in G+, may be tempted to stop checking FB, Twitter, (and your mail?)!  Till then there is a Chrome extension to share on FB and Twitter from Google+.  You can find it here.

Fortunately for Twitter Google+ has no hashtags.

Now this is not what I did when I started but trying to explain Google+ to a couple of friends, I realized that we learn by comparing anything new to what we know.  Since we know FB and Twitter, we keep comparing Google+ to these.  That is fair enough, and this model will help folks get used to Google+ and they can figure out the exceptions and limitations.  There are many nuances but rather than become a case of paralysis by analysis, just start and be extra careful about what you post till you get the nuances.