Confession: I was wrong on Google+
Recanting my position on Google+ - it does loom promising.

I owe Google an apology. When I first posted about Google+, I gave in to the snark impulse. And, to be fair, I had reason. Google Wave was an over-hyped road-crash, and Google Buzz was just a road-crash. The companyās record in Social was poor.
And, to my surprise, I find myself using Google+ more than I use Facebook or Twitter right now, and having more interesting conversations. It sits neatly between the two services, being slightly more functional than Twitter, and a lot less cluttered than Facebook. For me, thatās proving to be a sweet spot that makes it a more useful part of my day to day routine. I dip in and out of Twitter to see whatās happening generally. I dive into Facebook once a day or so, just to see what friends are up to. But, right now, Iām going into Google+ periodically through the day for good conversations. And, in that, itās a truly successful social product.
Now, to be fair, my experience with those older product meant that I went into the Google+ Ā environment forewarned. Iāve not added very many people at all whom I donāt know, and am ruthlessly segregating into Circles at the moment I add them. And thatās whatās made it such a productive environment, because Iāve got so much more control than I do elsewhere. And possibly, thatās going to be the differentiating feature of this product ā the control it gives the user.
Details+
Hereās a few specific things Iāve noticed:
- I have Friends in Google+ who arenāt even in Facebook. There are people who are very, very anti-Facebook, and this offers them the core functionality of the service without much of the cruft that comes with it (mainly, the endless, horrible app-spam).
- Circles is more significant than some people think, being less about privacy per se as about control and filtering. Being able to select only certain groups of people to see or share with at any time makes it a much more efficient social environment than Twitter or Facebook. While you can create lists in both of those services, they were retro-fitted and arenāt in the core of the application. Conversely, in Google+, you have to put people into a Circle to follow them at all, so the segregation is built into the use of the application. Plus, itās fun.
- Noisy celebrity types, with huge numbers of followers are actually a definite minus in this service. Iāve dropped a couple of āweb celebā types, just because their streams cause too much noise in my own stream.
So, sorry Google. And good work.
You can find me on Google+ here, if you fancy joining in.