Yesterday afternoon I received an invitation to join Google+, the new social web that is similar to, but different than, Facebook. I accepted the invitation, although I didn’t have a lot of time to play with it until I got home from work. After work and this morning I gave it a try.
Google+ is based around the concept of “circles.” The idea is, most people run in several different social circles, and may want to share different information with different circles. Default circles include friends, family, acquaintances and “followers,” who are people you’ve never met but whose information is of interest to you. You can create circles of your own. So far I’ve created two new ones:
- A circle I call “inner circle,” which will contain the 12 or 14 people I hang with most every day. I’ll likely share more with that group than the 200-300 people who will land in my “friends” circle.
- A “social media/tech community” circle. There are a lot of people in Memphis who post excellent stuff about social media, PHP programming, WordPress, etc. I want to hear what they have to say, and hopefully contribute to the discussion as well. I talk to them on Facebook and Twitter already, but I’ve always hated it that they’ve had to read “Woohoo! Tube top sitting two seats down from me nearly had a malfunction!” and similar posts and Flying Saucer checkins and so on. Now I can keep that group separate. People can be in multiple circles at once, so I can put tech contacts in my “friends” group as well if I want them to see my tube top and drinking posts.
One thing I really, really like about Google+: When you add someone to a circle, they are notified they’ve been added, but they aren’t told which circle. This addresses a big problem I’ve seen with another social network, Foursquare. Have you ever got a friend request on there, and you don’t really want that person knowing where you are, but you also don’t want to hurt their feelings and ignore their request? (This has been a big problem in my group of friends lately.) On Google+ you can add such a person to your circle, and they’ll get notified and be happy, but you can actually add them to a circle you don’t plan to share much with.
I also like it that Google+ uses Picasa as their photo app, and there is now unlimited photo storage. Problem is, I used Picasa up until about 2009 when I started using Facebook for photos, so now there’s a two-year hole. I wish there were a Facebook-to-Picasa photo importer. Maybe there is. I’ve only been playing with this for a day. I do think Picasa is superior to Facebook’s photo app.
Also interested to see what they will create as the equivalent of Facebook fan pages for businesses. As of right now, they’re asking businesses to hold off on joining. They’re still working on business presence and they want businesses to join the correct way, when it’s ready. Since I manage our social media presence at work, I’ll have to keep an eye on news about Google+ in the coming weeks.
Obviously there will be a lot of plugins written in the weeks and months to come, to integrate Google+ with other social media and web platforms. (Interested to see future WordPress-Google+ interaction.)
I’m just getting started with Google+, so it’s too early for me to agree that this will be the Facebook-killer some people think it is. They’re not off to a bad start though. Right now Google+ is invite-only, but they should have it completely rolled out to the public by the end of the month.