The social network on steroids – my first thoughts on Google +
One of the things about the internet that I truely love, is the fact that what one day is super hot and where people hang, is not necessarily the same scenario the day after. People they are like nomads and trying out more and more services and abandoning old ones. Ah the smell of the change in the morning…
So while I have been on a vacation, google launched google + and I think it’s a hands-down fantastic service.
When I started to digg in deeper I decided to structure some of my circles:
- some around languages and other different kind of contacts. Seriously just that it overcomes the language barrier that I have in relation to my network (some I speak english too – others I want to speak danish too, others french or swedish) is a gift for me as an english communicator but a native dane.
-some around interest – business, inspiration, art, music, crafting, creativity, social media, internet tendencies,
- some around relationships: business contacts, friends, family, people I don’t know well, but I’ve met.
The thing is that it gives me a way of directing my content more, it makes me show different sides of my personality and best of all: I think it will make me give more value, love and rockn’roll to the individual person.
So how do I see people use it these days ? I see a lot of people posting interesting stuff, some are starting to push their own offers out there – and even more so in google + than in facebook, it makes me want to block them out. When the social network gets tighter, more conversational and more threaded, I think the broadcasting that you need to do there as an entrepreneur – needs to be more carefully selected. I broadcast my stuff/content/blogposts/e-books too – but I try to measure it up by being an active part of the community as well. So is this the more strategic – more fragmented- less “inside the box” social media of the near future ? I would say “most likely“.
So what are people saying about it ?
A lot of people are saying that it looks a bit like a combination of Twitter and Facebook. But I think it looks like one of the biggest all time tech/web loves of mine (disclaimer: and former client) : Jaiku. Google + is what I could easily picture Jaiku to be a couple of years down the line. (they where purchased by google in 2007).
Im not going to compare them more, they just have a lot of resemblance for which I am overjoyed, Because some of the more conversational touch (and threaded conversations with everybody) of the web ( instead of statements) have been missing. I think twitter is filled with statements, facebook is very narcissistic, and if almighty google play their cards right, I think we could actually see some of the “social” I have missed mostly about the social web: the openness and the old idea of internetforums but in real time. I am have been using facebook extensively for the last 5 years – but I think that google + is going to a new place for me to hang – in a more open and a less restricted way.
The idea that you can connect with everybody in a comment or in a thread and where everything becomes more directed to the community than to the actual person, because it’s more open (I mean Twitter is a mess at this – follow conversations anyone ?)
I truely hope it will make the online conversations less complicated..
I am also looking forward to see more of it all – and see what the response is going to be from the rest of the online social networks =)
let the game begin.
6 Responses
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Pingback: Kim Bach . Org » Blog Archive » Take the “Pepsi-challenge” Google+
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Great post. I mostly like google+ but don’t use it because:
1) People write to long.
2) Comments, video and stuff is shown in my stream, making me scroll to a disability check, just to see post nr. two in my stream. Compare with twitter where I can easily see 10 posts per page.
3) No hashtags – making it difficult to find and engage with people I dont know about.
4) No integration with google reader (I want to share from my huge rss repository). YEs – twitter doesn’t have this either – but a google product really should.If google fixes theese things – It might be a facebook killer. But I feel it’s very different from twittter. And I hardly ever use facebook these days
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Just forgot – circles:I am a piler – not a filer. As such I wont be using more then ca. 4-5 circles – and thats only when people get onboard. For now I have exclkusively used public. + targeted messages to individual.
The huddle and hangout feature is nice of course.
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BTW – have you seen : http://pluserati.alltop.com/
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twitter doesn’t really have hashtags, it’s more of a consensus-thing amongst the twitter users. You can of course begin to use hashtags, but Google search seems to disregard a prefixed #.
Taking clues from facebook is more likely what Google will do, and hastags are really replaced by page-metions, even though amazingly few uses that to organise posts.
Google+ and facebook will never match the simplicity, anarchy and fun of twitter, and we shouldn’t compare the three services..
Google+ is for sharing content on the web, facebook is for sharing content on facebook and, secondarily, the web, twitter is for “revolutions” – room for all three in my book – the competition will force facebook to innovate, and they’ve already, silently, rolled out new features, like link-preview in comments. The biggest change for facebook, will be that they have to change their privacy policies, towards openness, something Zuckerberg has already said they will do.
Thank you for your thoughts Henriette, and for sharing it on Google+ so that I noticed it
. Frankly I still don’t “get” circles, and miss the simplicity of Jaiku. Jaiku really had a sweet spot and an amazing “social algorithm”, that Google+ seems to have missed completely.
My own article on Google+ focuses on a typical facebook usecase, and you can’t do that on Google+…Yet…(Frankly I don’t think Google will ever be able to match the agility of facebook, but I do welcome the competition \o/)