Google Plus
When I was first invited to Google+ by fellow geek, Lynette Young, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was one of those people who really had high hopes for Google Wave and was, like most others, utterly let down when they finally delivered. So, at best, I figured it would be worth checking out. I certainly didn’t expect to find a social network that would inspire me to close up my Facebook account. I did notice an intense buzz surrounding Plus on other social networks though. I witnessed people literally begging for Google+ invites to their geek friends on Facebook. It was intriguing to say the least.
I logged in and started playing around. Because of how social networks have become a part of my daily life, I had no problems navigating around the site. I didn’t have any whimsical sense of magic or enlightenment, but there were a lot of moments punctuated with me thinking things like, “Oh, nice!” or “It’s about time someone implemented that!”.
The absolute standout feature is Circles. Circles is a new and clever way to manage the grouping of friends. Facebook had lists, but they were insanely under utilized. Google scored major points by focusing the entire network around Circles. Right away I thought of a few cool uses for Circles. For example, I created a Circle called “Local” and added everyone in my area. I also created a Circle for business and another for family. It’s really intuitive and easy to use.
Another feature that stood out was Hangouts. Hangouts are group video chats that are open to whatever Circles the creator specifies. Very cool! It only took Facebook a week or two to follow suit with Skype integration. However, Google+ wins this battle because of how simple it is.
I also took the time to download the Android App for Google+. I was immediately impressed with a few features, specifically the instant upload feature for photos and videos. Whenever I take a photo or video with my Android phone, it automatically uploads them to Google+ to a private folder that only I can see. I can then choose individual photos or videos to share on Google+…very cool!
So, what’s the final verdict? Well, I plan to delete my Facebook account within the next week or so. Yep. It’s that good!
delete your FB account in a week huh? I’ll believe it when I see it! Google is copying a platform, thats all it is. It’s a clone of FB, they’ve taken something someone else has already spent a lot of engineering hours on, copied it, put a Google logo on it, and the Google fan boys come running. If they really wanted to impress me, they need to innovate. Everything they’ve come out with the past 3-5 years has been either a copy of someone else (including search…Google.com is starting to look a lot more like Bing everyday). I mean Google+ literally looks exactly like FB…am I the only one that thinks thats totally shady??
You know the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”. Well, there’s a lot of things that Facebook got right. The UI is one of them. So, Google took all the stuff that worked and then improved all the things that suck about Facebook. The end result is something that is superior to Facebook in almost every way except that not everyone’s on it yet.
I love the article Tom, and I’m not going to beg for an invite, but when I get one thrown my way, I will check it out. I do have to agree with Cyrus on one point, and that is that deleting your FB account within a week sounds a bit extreme… maybe you should hold off until a few more of us can share the Google+ experience with you ;)
Although google began their own social network after FB’s success. They used new and more organized improvement. Besides that, google began way before bing, and microsoft started bing because they wanted to compete with google as the boss of the computer world.
f-u-c-k facebook!
Hey Cyrus, I deleted all of the content from my Facebook account and I will be deactivating it soon. Only took me a couple of hours. It was well worth it! I already feel more free.
I can’t see why so many people are so eager to get involved with a corporation whose business model boils down to:
Get a lot of people to give you a lot of personal information.
Aggregate this information for sale to spammers, scammers and snoops.
Well Steve, your comment tells me that you know very little about business models. It isn’t Google’s responsibility to keep people from sharing their private information. It is the users responsibility to make sure that they are only sharing what they want to be public.