New: Know When Your Sent Emails Are Read!

Circles enable you to organize contacts into groups for sharing across various Google products and services. Although other users can view the list of people in your collection of circles, they cannot view the names of those circles. Organization is done through a drag-and-drop interface. Circles allows users to drag-and-drop their friends into different friend groups, which categorizes them. This allows you to put your mom in your “Family” circle, your boss in your “Business” circle and your best friend from college in your “Friends” circle. To understand Google Plus and Circles better try going to the Settings Gear and select Profile and Privacy. Look for "See how your profile looks to other users." Type in a user name from different circles and click Preview to see what your profile looks like from the specified user.

You can have as many “Circles” you want, you can have one for your family, your friends, one for your random friends on the internet. You can also choose which circle you want to see a articular status or share it with all your circles, or extended circles (all your friends circles) or go public.

Knowing if they “Follow” you

In G+, when you “follow” someone is when you put them in a circle. When they follow you back is when they put you in a circle, to see that go to that person’s page and if they are following you back it says ” You are in person’s circle too” underneath their name.

Following back

To circle back the people who circled you, you can chose to add them in a circle straight from the notification that they have added you to a circle or you go to your circles tab from your profile and click on the “People who’ve added you” to see who circled you. You can chose to add them to circles one by one or chose More Options > Select All > and add everythone who is following you to a circle all at once. Now, to see who you haven’t followed click on the sort button and click on “Not yet in circles” filter. Then you can drag and drop your G+ mates to their appropriate circle.

Uncircling/Unfollowing

If you found yourself circling everyone on G+ and you need to uncirclcle them, you need to head to “People in your circles” and edit whoever you don’t wish to “follow” anymore.

Also, if you see the little email box on their icons, those people who you’ve added and has not yet signed up, if that email address is not a Gmail address, you might as well remove it.

Controlling Your Privacy With Google Plus Circles

You have the option of using the default circles provided by Google+ or creating your own customized circles. When you post a photo or stream update, you have the option of choosing which of your circles can see that update. The specific privacy controls for your circles can be chosen as follows:

Public: Anyone on Google+. Anyone who views your profile, anyone who has included you in one of their circles even if they don’t have you in their circles or you haven’t added them to yours. Time will tell if these streams will be available via search engine results such as backdoor privacy issues we’ve seen with Facebook.
Your Circles: Everyone who is in one of your circles.
Specific Circles: Whichever circles you choose. If you don’t want your Family circle to see photos of your Friday night escapades, don’t add your Family Circle.
Extended Circles: Everyone who is in a circle of someone in one of your circles. Similar to your 2nd or 3rd Connections on LinkedIn.
Specific Contacts: You can also add individual email addresses for those that aren’t on Google+.