I’m interested to hear what folks have to say about Google+.

 I've got an invite but haven't been able to check it out yet.

For those who may now be aware, Google+ is Google's latest effort to
get into the social networking scene. Its previous efforts, such as
Google Buzz and Wave, fizzled.

Particularly disastrous was the launch of Google Buzz. They flipped a
switch and I (and countless others) got messages saying that we had
been automatically placed in a social network with people just because
we had previously exchanged emails. Problem was, there are some folks
I've previously exchanged email with that I don't *want* to be
automatically socially networked with.

I couldn't turn the thing off fast enough.

Word I'm hearing from those who have used Google+ is much more
positive, though. Some are even talking about it as a replacement for
Facebook.

Here's an article on the subject.

GET THE STORY.

What are your thoughts?

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

16 thoughts on “I’m interested to hear what folks have to say about Google+.”

  1. It seems to be a weird cross between Twitter and Facebook. It makes me yawn. 🙂

  2. Google has a tendency to start something and the never finish it. If that is the case with Google+, then obviously it won’t be particularly good in the long run.
    They also have the tendency to get a lot of users for their new software mainly on the basis of trendiness – especially in the “nerd” community (of which I am a member of course) – rather than by virtue of quality. The quality may or may not be there, but early user adoption is not necessarily a sign of this.
    Finally, the noise you hear about Google products is typically far in excess of the actual popularity. The kinds of people who like to jump on new Google products are also the same types of people who spend a lot of time on the internet telling people their opinions. Thus, it can seem like a Google product is a lot more popular than it really is.
    All things to consider when thinking about Google+ or any of their products.
    Personally, I don’t see the need for it, and honestly, I hope it doesn’t take off. For one thing, Facebook is so well established that everybody has one.l This means not only that there’s no need for Google+, but also that if people do start switching over to it, it will annoyingly fragment the social networking scene such that it will be more difficult to stay connected to all of my friends.
    Secondly, Google has waaaay to much presence in the IT world. They’re quite literally Skynet at this point. I say only half jokingly that it’s only a matter of time before the Google servers become sentient and try to kill us all. Of course, the more immediate issue is that Google already has control of a lot of data, users, personal information, etc. I would very much prefer not giving them more.

  3. I use it as a hybrid between FB and twitter, in that I can converse w/ people that aren’t my ‘friends’ but we share common interests.
    That said, one of the biggest weaknesses of G+ is the ability to find news in real time or the latest posts on any particular subject.
    Twitter is wonderful at this because of hashtags and the ability to search via content, not users.
    G+ needs to address this!

  4. I like the way it combines the utility of Twitter and FB. Essentially, you can choose to share things publicly, in which case anyone who has chosen to ‘follow’ you can see it, whether or not they are a member of your ‘circles’, or you can choose to share with all, or some, of your circles or any specific member of a circle. On FB, to maintain both a public and a private presence, you need essentially two pages (one ‘fan’ page and one normal profile)- two personas to maintain. But someone like you, Jimmy, could have private circles that you message about personal stuff that your public followers don’t need to be privy to, but then (without opening a different page or even a different window) post interesting apologetics links and thoughts to any public followers who might have your posts added to their stream.
    The other utility for someone like me is of course that G+ is already integrated (or will become integrated) with all the google services I use already. I use blogger, picasa, gmail, google reader, google docs, and of course the google search. FB has a social network that has tried very hard to become the one stop portal – but it can’t quite manage it and every attempt has made it more cluttered and awkward (does ANYONE like the new message setup?) In contrast, Google already has a whole array of coordinated offerings, and the google navigation bar along the top links them together nicely to make it easy to go from one to another.
    There are, of course, some bugs to iron out. I’m hoping Google is smart enough to be responsive to their user base in a way FB hasn’t often been.

  5. You can share things with particular groups of people or with the public at large in Facebook off of one account very easily.

  6. I’m using it, and really like what I see so far. I think it takes the best of Facebook and Twitter, and makes it simpler to use. They certainly have a way to go, and I think they’re intentionally going slow so they don’t overwhelm less tech-savvy users, but it’s definitely the best social network I’ve seen. Google has a lot riding on this, so no doubt that they’ll see this one through.

  7. A good thing about Google+ is that one can edit any post or comment after it has been posted. Facebook doesn’t allow this. Although the editing-past-posts-and-comments capability could be abused and could lead to confusion, I think that it is a very nice feature. I’d make it a point to connect on Google+ only with folks who don’t abuse the capability.
    Another good thing about Google+ is its integration with Picasa, which is IMO a better tool for dealing with pictures and movies than what FB provides.
    There are many things that Google+ is not good at (yet), but as Google continues to integrate its other services with Google+, things will get better. For example, the lack of integration with Reader is a sore spot for me. All indications are, however, that Google+ is a long-term effort by Google and not a half-baked experiment.

  8. Facebook is nice if you only ever talk to people who actually are your friends. Or if you’re cool with pretending everyone you talk to is actually your friend. And of course, “friend” is a binary variable…either you’d trust somebody as much as you trust the guy who was best man at your wedding, or they’re a stranger. Plus, of course, all your friends are necessarily interested in the same kinds of things you might say, and if you ever want to say anything to someone, then of course you want to have to choose between continuing to obsessively follow every detail of their life or else risk giving offense by declaring them no longer your friend.
    Um…yeah. Doesn’t describe me, much. How about you?
    Google+ is the solution to that. Google+ is a way for me to say “Jimmy Akin is not my friend, since Jimmy Akin doesn’t even know me…but I like his writing enough to want to keep track of a certain subset of what he has to say.” It’s also good for “we need a way to organize our North Side of Chicago Catholic Movies and Horrible Jokes Night, but our relatives who live in other states and often aren’t Catholic and frequently have no sense of humor don’t really care to read about our logistical wrangling”. Facebook is, of course, notoriously bad at both of these things. Facebook was designed by and for college students, and when grownups try to use it, we slam pretty hard into its implicit assumptions about how social networks actually function. Google+ was designed specifically to do away with those bogus assumptions.
    Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it “as close to perfect as anything designed by men instead of by God is capable of achieving, seeing as how perfection is reserved to God alone”? Uh…no, it’s not that either.
    But it is much, much, MUCH better than Facebook.

  9. I have (not necessarily disjoint) circles for Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following, Co-Workers, Students (who I’d never add on Facebook), and Catholics. (Note, those encircled can’t tell which circles they’re in. They can see who else is in on any given message, but they don’t see circle names.)
    I find the ability to address messages to specific circles quite freeing. I haven’t used sparks or huddle much, so I can’t comment, but I imagine they’d be useful in some circumstances. The integration with other Google apps is great, and I’m looking forward to more of this.
    I hope that either it takes off or that Facebook adopts its communication model.

  10. It really is all about the Circles, Jimmy. That’s the most important innovation. You get to be yourself, which means, you get to communicate differently with different groups of people, just like you do in real life. You don’t have to become the lowest-common-denominator “you” that Facebook forces you to become. Facebook requires self-censorship and in the process shuts down many avenues of thought and communication.

  12. I’ll also point out that Facebook groups and Google+ circles are fundamentally different.
    A group is a bunch of people who all hear everything that everyone else is saying (i.e. an undirected clique or complete graph – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_graph ), and FWIW, I don’t think my group posts show up in my Facebook feed (but I’m not sure of this). It’s many-to-many broadcast within the group. In Facebook, I belong to a group called “Family” which was set up by somebody else and contains some people in my family but also a bunch of people I don’t even know (presumably they’re on the “other side” of that person’s family). We can all post, but most don’t because it’s not a group most people want to address, and a few do, but many of the posts aren’t relevant to large portions of the group. It’s just awkward for the intended purpose of the group.
    A circle, on the other hand, is a directed communication channel from one person to many other people (i.e. a one-to-many multicast – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast or directed star graph).
    That’s not to say that groups don’t have their place. I would really like both communication models to be available in either service.

  13. I’ve been using it since it came out and I am pleasantly surprised by how much they got right.
    It has a nice clean interface and circle creation is very easy and intuitive and I love the control of directing posts to various audiences or as public. Facebook has lists, but it feels grafted on and not an integral part of Facebook. It is very easy to just see the feed for one of your cycles and to switch between them. So it makes it easy to prioritize what you want to see.
    I like that you are not limited in the length of the post as I had run into the character limit many times in Facebook.
    Being able to edit posts is nice when you need to correct mistakes or update information.
    Google+ has actually taken over Twitter and Facebook for me as the first thing I look at and post at. There is also already a growing Catholic community on Google+ and I already have about 250 people in my Catholic circle.
    There are certainly areas that need improvement, but they are actively addressing most of them.

  14. Do we actually need ANOTHER social network?
    FB is stupid enough and often I wish I never joined it (the only
    positive side is that you can easily keep contact with people you know)

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