Google's Circles is a classical example of something that seems like a great idea on paper but doesn't work in practice. It had too much friction: categorizing people by circles and then also deciding which circle should receive what. Apparently nobody liked it and it's one of the reasons Plus failed so spectacularly.
Circles is group chats (WhatsApp, or whatever's popular in your neck of the woods), which I'd argue is how (most?) people in 2025 actually do “social networking.”
It's how people talk to groups of dozens of people at a time: friends, neighbors, acquaintances, the parents of your kid's school mates to discuss school stuff or to setup a birthday party… coworkers if you include more work oriented chat apps.
I have dozens of such groups, some with photos of kids around a birthday cake that I'd never have put up of Facebook (if I still used it).
If that's not social networking, I'm not sure what is.
Another reason was asymmetric friendships. Meaning Alice could add Bob to a circle without Bob adding Alice back. Made it so much harder for the network effect to kick in.
