Facebook Engineers Copy Circles

Facebook engineers Peng Fan, Vladimir Kolesnikov,  Brian Rosenthal, and Zahan Malkani have taken inspiration from the much talked about Google Circles design, and created Circlehack, a much simpler tool to build Facebook Friend lists.

Right now to ad friends to different user list, there is a long many click process: See Friend Lists and Privacy

This is a very cool, simple drag and drop-to create-lists interface.

Still, it doesn’t have the smooth look and feel of Google+.

Google+ still has many advantages over this new copyhack.  For instance, when you hover over a friend in G+ you’ll see some info about them, such as what circles you already have them in.  This feature is lacking in Circlehack.  While you can create new lists right from the app, you can’t set privacy setting for these lists. For that you again have to struggle through another multi-click process.

If you don’t have google+ yet, try this new app out. It’ll get your feet wet in making your circles when you do get in!

Credit to them for coming out with a google-ish feeling app so soon. I’m sure this is only the beginning, as we see facebook step off it’s comfortable place at the top, and fight for the users that will be swarming to Google + when it’s released.