There are no Stupid Questions just Stupid People (Like Me)

[whitewhiskey]

Maybe that's a bit extreme, but all of us have things we don't know but are probably afraid to ask for fear of being seen as stupid. Well, I say enough with the ignorance, let's just ask what we want to know and get things over with.

As the idiot who started this, I'll go first...

Okay, so I was linked to a youtube video recently (This one, if you want to know), and I noticed in that google+ notifications thing that it said someone "Added me to his circles".

My question is, what the blue hell is a "Circle" on youtube/google+ and why would someone I've never responded to add me?

 

[Schema]

In general this strategy is the Ping, Aka send out questions, hoping to get back answers. Even if the question is something as simple as, "Are you an active account?"

Depending on the service even reading the Ping could potentially return information.

Imagine having an Image embedded into an email, an image with a URL only sent to you, open the image, their servers log a visitor, you have read their message.

Their is also another possibility, an opt-in increase of access.

Some services will give people further exposure to your information by just "Friending" them.

If it is something like twitter anytime you share something, they say it now as well.

Sort of like a tracker.

For other services there might be information that is blocked by the "Public" but not "Pending Friends"

Facebook is a prime example of the second.

Twitter saw the rise of a "You follow me, I'll follow you" phenomena, not really noteworthy besides the fact that people use it today to try to increase their own followers, where followers is directly correlated to how much they get paid to spam, advertise, ect.

Now that we got through the legal Marketing related reasons...

There is always Identity theft, and less commonly Stalking and General Harassment.

 

[ThreadWeaver]

A "circle" is Google's Google+ name for a group of friends. They've pretty much linked all Google services together and they're pushing Google+ harder than ancient Egyptians supposedly did Hebrew slaves. Google+ is Google's attempt at unseating Facebook.

Basically, being added to a circle on Google+ is the same as being friended on Facebook.