I Feel Like a Geeky Navin Johnson
Instead of exclaiming, “The new phone books are here ,the new phone books are here!” I’m saying “Google + is here, Google + is here!”
After waiting for what felt like forever (actually maybe a week), Sugar Daddy came through with an invite for me to sign up. Because they’re doing a controlled release, it’s an invite only deal for now.
I make no secret of my Google love. We use Google Apps for work and I use my Gmail account more than people even realize since I have my parrotheads.org and Cox account forwarded there.
I also make no secret of my Facebook love, either. It’s been a great tool to reconnect with friends and family and makes it easy to keep in touch with all. The key there is the word “all”.
What Facebook doesn’t do is easily allow you to segregate your posts, photos, links, etc. So, if I get tagged in a not so mature photo, everyone sees it (or, what is more likely is that I tag someone else and their kids and Grandma sees it). Sure, you can lock it down but it’s really kluge to do so. I think most people go with on or off on all permissions.
Google + Circles is the answer to that problem and the feature I was most looking forward to checking out. Turns out, it’s ridiculously easy to use. You simply drag people into your Circle then, when you post, you can control which Circles see your message. You can also include people in more than one Circle.
Circles (image from Google's blog)
You can also selectively view your Stream (the equivalent to FB’s Newsfeed) be clicking on a circle. You can still select to see everything. I can see that being handy when you just want to see what your local peeps are doing.
My Stream with Work selected (no one in that Circle has posted anything yet)
It’s still in the developmental stage. For example, Google has told businesses to not create profiles yet as they’ve got something specific for them coming up.
It will be interesting to watch it play out - Facebook vs Google+. Will people abandon Facebook as they did MySpace or will they use both or will Google+ go the way of Buzz and Wave?
In the meantime, I’ll be playing around with it. Hit me up if you want an invite.
After waiting for what felt like forever (actually maybe a week), Sugar Daddy came through with an invite for me to sign up. Because they’re doing a controlled release, it’s an invite only deal for now.
I make no secret of my Google love. We use Google Apps for work and I use my Gmail account more than people even realize since I have my parrotheads.org and Cox account forwarded there.
I also make no secret of my Facebook love, either. It’s been a great tool to reconnect with friends and family and makes it easy to keep in touch with all. The key there is the word “all”.
What Facebook doesn’t do is easily allow you to segregate your posts, photos, links, etc. So, if I get tagged in a not so mature photo, everyone sees it (or, what is more likely is that I tag someone else and their kids and Grandma sees it). Sure, you can lock it down but it’s really kluge to do so. I think most people go with on or off on all permissions.
Google + Circles is the answer to that problem and the feature I was most looking forward to checking out. Turns out, it’s ridiculously easy to use. You simply drag people into your Circle then, when you post, you can control which Circles see your message. You can also include people in more than one Circle.
Circles (image from Google's blog)You can also selectively view your Stream (the equivalent to FB’s Newsfeed) be clicking on a circle. You can still select to see everything. I can see that being handy when you just want to see what your local peeps are doing.
My Stream with Work selected (no one in that Circle has posted anything yet)It’s still in the developmental stage. For example, Google has told businesses to not create profiles yet as they’ve got something specific for them coming up.
It will be interesting to watch it play out - Facebook vs Google+. Will people abandon Facebook as they did MySpace or will they use both or will Google+ go the way of Buzz and Wave?
In the meantime, I’ll be playing around with it. Hit me up if you want an invite.
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