Why Collections?

Why Collections?
We on the Google+ team often get asked why are you making this or that change? What's the thinking behind product changes/features. To that end, thought I'd share my perspective on why Collections?...

Collections allows people to organize what they publish into multiple topics. These topics can be followed or unfollowed. This:

* helps readers to get more content with control they don’t have when just following people. many other social sites are "all or nothing" when it comes to following people.

* frees up content creators to publish more and not worry about overloading followers. we often hear concerns about "spamming my followers" with posts they might consider irrelevant.

* encourages content creators to post across multiple interests instead of focusing only on one topic. i.e. don't just have to be the "deep sea photography person"

* gives content creators archiving abilities they long for. many publish as personal catalogs/journals and for recovery (get back to my content) reasons.

* content creators bemoan all their content disappearing "into the stream”, collections provide a way to give their posts re-newed life and permanence.

Hope that gives some sense of the thinking behind the Collections feature. Thanks~