What is a circle and why should I join them?

Circles are the community component of Behance. Circles are a way to organize your creative professional community by a sub-interest or niche. For example, some people use them to gather people in certain locations (ie: Poland Designers), alumni groups use them to keep past students connected with each other, some circles gather people around certain interests (ie: videographers for charity), or they can be used to gather a few select people in a "private circle" to work on a project.

Members can also create projects that are only visible to members in a particular circle (and not in their public portfolio) by changing the privacy settings for the project.

Every circle contains the following elements:
(1) A list of members involved.
(2) A collection of all of the projects by the members in the circle (or a subset of these projects w/ a particular tag).
(3) A discussion thread tool. Each circle is a discussion forum in itself.
(4) "Bulletins" that are posted by the Circle's founder or administrator.
(5) Circle founders and administrators are also able send messages to their entire circle.

Circles are a powerful tool to build your professional network and spread your work more broadly. When you join a circle, every member of the circle will see your public projects and will be notified on their Activity Feed (in MyHome) whenever you publish a new project.
 

Watch Video: Scott & Matias talk about using "circles" in the Behance Network