The Circle

helpful to see the two distinct feeds. But of course the OuterCircle is still in
     the Circle, right? Everything is. Make sense so far?”
    Mae said it did.
    “I can’t believe you’ve been here a week without being on the main social feed. You’re
     about to have your world rocked.” Gina tapped Mae’s screen and Mae’s InnerCircle stream
     became a torrent of messages pouring down the monitor.
    “See, you’re getting all last week’s stuff, too. That’s why there’s so many. Wow,
     you really missed a lot.”
    Mae followed the counter on the bottom of the screen, calculating all the messages
     sent to her from everyone else at the Circle. The counter paused at 1,200. Then 4,400.
     The numbers scrambled higher, stopping periodically but finally settling at 8,276.
    “That was last week’s messages? Eight thousand?”
    “You can catch up,” Gina said brightly. “Maybe even tonight. Now, let’s open up your
     regular social account. We call it OuterCircle, but it’s the same profile, same feed
     as you’ve had for years. Mind if I open it up?”
    Mae didn’t mind. She watched as her social profile, the one she’d first set up years
     ago, now appeared on her third screen, next to the InnerCircle feed. A cascade of
     messages and photos, a few hundred, filled the monitor.
    “Okay, looks like you have some catching up to do here, too,” Gina said. “A feast!
     Have fun.”
    “Thank you,” Mae said. She tried to sound as excited as she could. She needed Gina
     to like her.
    “Oh wait. One more thing. I should explain message hierarchy. Shit. I almost forgot
     message hierarchy. Dan would kill me. Okay, so you know that your first-screen CE
     responsibilities are paramount. We have to serve our customers with our full attention
     and our full hearts. So that’s understood.”
    “It is.”
    “On your second screen, you might get messages from Dan and Jared, or Annie, or anyone
     directly supervising your work. Those messages inform the minute-to-minute quality
     of your service. So that would be your second priority. Clear?”
    “Clear.”
    “The third screen is your social, Inner- and OuterCircle. But these messages aren’t,
     like, superfluous. They’re just as important as any other messages, but are prioritized
     third. And sometimes they’re urgent. Keep an eye on the InnerCircle feed in particular,
     because that’s where you’ll hear about staff meetings, mandatory gatherings, and any
     breaking news. If there’s a Circle notice that’s really pressing, that’ll be marked
     in orange. Something extremely urgent will prompt a message on your phone, too. You
     keep that in view?” Mae nodded at her phone, resting just below the screens on her
     desk. “Good,” Gina said. “So those are the priorities, with your fourth priority your
     own OuterCircle participation. Which is just as important as anything else, because
     we value your work-life balance, you know, the calibrationbetween your online life here at the company and outside it. I hope that’s clear.
     Is it?”
    “It is.”
    “Good. So I think you’re all set. Any questions?”
    Mae said she was fine.
    Gina’s head tilted skeptically, indicating she knew that Mae actually had many questions
     still, but didn’t want to ask them for fear of looking uninformed. Gina stood up,
     smiled, took a step back, but then stopped. “Crap. Forgot one more thing.” She crouched
     next to Mae, typed for a few seconds, and a number appeared on the third screen, looking
     much like her aggregate CE score. It said: M AE H OLLAND : 10,328.
    “This is your Participation Rank, PartiRank for short. Some people here call it the
     Popularity Rank, but it’s not really that. It’s just an algorithm-generated number
     that takes into account all your activity in the InnerCircle. Does that make sense?”
    “I think so.”
    “It takes into account zings, exterior followers of your intra-company zings, comments
     on your zings, your comments on others’ zings, your comments on other Circlers’ profiles,
     your photos posted, attendance at Circle events, comments and photos posted about
     those events—basically it collects and celebrates all you do here. The most active
     Circlers are ranked highest of course. As you can see, your rank is low now, but that’s
     because you’re new and we just activated your social feed. But every time you post
     or comment or attend anything, that gets factored in, and you’ll see your rank