Google+ Collections is a neat new way to follow and share curated sets of Google+ posts based on your interests, and it started rolling out as recently as May 4th. Google perhaps believes Collections to be so neat, in fact, that when they axed the ability to share set groups of people and pages earlier this week, they did so with nary an announcement (via Google Plus Daily). That, or so few people actually used this “Shared Circles” feature that the announcement of its removal wasn’t really necessary.
Since Google never even mentioned this change, we can’t know the exact reason behind the feature’s removal. But the feature as of late was used mostly for spamming, with lots of posts on the network soliciting users to add a Circle and reshare, which resulted in little to no engagement from new followers and lots of junk content in your feed. Again, the Google+ Collections tool has a similar intended use, allowing you to see groups of related content — but, not necessarily users. It’s definitely worth checking out if you were someone who used Shared Circles.
