We writers like to stay up on the whole social media thing. I tweet and blog. Inevitably, I knew I’d have to check out Google+, the newest shiny network on the block. I can’t say I was bowled over.
The interface looks like a milquetoast version of Facebook. Yet it doesn’t seem to have the social factor boiled in the way Facebook does. Ultimately I could see Google+ killing Facebook. After all, Facebook seems to mess with their privacy settings on a monthly basis.
On the surface, the circles function of Google+ seems like a superior solution. Yet there’s something to be said for Facebook’s simplicity. On Google+, I needed to move all my friends to circles. I’m not sure what would happen if I had more than would fit in that little circle. Now on Facebook, I have close to 100 friends. If I could port these over to Facebook, I’d have to manually move them into circles. What a pain.
One strange limitation about Google+ is that you can’t direct message someone or write on their wall. When I wanted to send a message to just one friend, I had to remember their exact name and then add that to my post. Plus, my message would simply appear in their stream. It could get lost.
Folks say Google+ will take down Twitter. Frankly, I don’t see it. Google+ feels too cold and logical. Everything is thought out. Twitter is funky. It has this bizarre system of hashtags that doesn’t follow any rules. Just like the English language, it evolves. I couldn’t imagine Google+ used as a revolutionary tool in countries around the world.
My final complaint with Google+ is the lack of a good iPad app. Without it, I can only access the mobile site. Have you ever seen the mobile site? It feels like I’m working on a computer terminal circa 1985. Almost DOS like. It’s horrific. And this is the best Google can do? I know that Apple is their competition, but if they want to woo users over, they have to jazz up the joint.
Tim Kane
Tim, I recently took the plunge on Google +, and I gotta say that the experience so far has been very confusing. I’m still trying to figure out how to add people (although I think I was successful in adding you), and now I’m wondering after reading this if I need to go back and add my 10 or so friends into circles. Regardless of these details, what irks me is that it’s ONE MORE THING to keep me from my writing. I know it’s necessary, but it’s hard enough keeping up with Twitter, FB and Goodreads (or crud, haven’t checked that in a while). Oh and then there’s that little thing called my blog. On the other hand, I don’t want to miss out on opportunities to evolve my platform. So how can writer’s like us expand our reach without going insane?
I get flustered too. I mostly concentrate on Twitter and my blog (which feeds Twitter, FB and Tumblr). Not so drawn to Google Plus. I signed up for goodreads, but haven’t had the chance to explore it. Is it worth the time? I’d rather be writing.
well, i have been using Google+ and I really like it because there aren’t those horrible and nasty ads. I can manage the people i know and the people i just don’t really want in… i like to share things to specific people and well if you don’t want your comment to be lost just remember to click on “notify” and the will be notified about it. I don’t really like people to post on my profile, they can comment; i’d rather the Twitter way, just by mentions with and @, and well G+ is similar in this case. I love hashtags and G+ allows you to use hashtags and gif images… that’s so cool. i’ve created 3 google+ pages and they’re totally successful because the G+ people are so attentive, if you want to get a nice public just go to G+. and if you don’t trust me well my pages are: Wanna be circled, Freelingua and well i only use my profile for my real friends and i have a page of myself so people can add me there: Guillermo Côndado (the page not the profile)