Google+ is the newest addition to not only Google but the social networking world as well. Most of you are thinking, Google joins the social network? It seems that Google is tired of being the diving platform for everyone else’s pools.
Google+ came out recently and to be honest over here at the BQB we were like what is this? At first I thought it was a means to get people to join Google’s Gmail and Gchat telling my editor,
DCTeti, that I was probably just the latest way of inviting you to join Google’s Gmail. However after I received an invitation from my best friend Fallon, I realized that this was a different thing and of course I would need to look into it.
What is Google+? Well visually it takes a few pages of Facebook, combines them with a few tweets of Twitter, while adding a dash of Digg, a smidget of Stumbleupon, even a bit of Linkedin, with a garnish of videos and pictures rather than connecting to YouTube,
Vimeo, Picasa/Flickr and all those other sites. Basically Google+ I have to say is quite an enjoyable entity for this writer, to me it may be the next social networking platform.
However I personally enjoy it because of the visual ease that it has on my eyes. Things are
horizontal and easy to get too, rather than having to scroll down and decipher through tweets, newsfeeds, albums and videos. The colors are appealing and it allows you to edit with ease. Visually Google has struck out in the past, now it is starting to get the hang of designing its sites towards the human eye.
Right now they are going through a test trial, taking on individuals and seeing if this is going to work or not with the social networking world currently exploding. Personally I believe that this is the first step in the direction of utilizing “Clouds” virtual worlds that allow you to live and connect wherever you are. In an earlier article I wrote about technology and computers ecoming a part of our everyday life, aka ubiquitous computing. Think about it. When Sony’s PlayStation Network was breached, there was a possibility of over 77 million users having their informationcompromised. 77 million people use the Sony PlayStation Network, crazy huh? Well Google sees the power of social networking and advertising and I have to admit, it is easier when you can just do everything in one place rather than having to go to all these different sites to maintain contact with your friends.
Google+ is in the start up phase and on the home page it reads this:
You’re a part of a small group of people who are helping to test Google+. When you share something with people who are not yet able to use Google+, they will receive it via email
but won’t be able to comment or engage with the content like other Google+ users. They’ll be able to join Google+ as we let more users in over time.
When you first start up they ask you to enter your profile information and a picture. Its basic,
not complicated and does not take most of your time. Facebook has a section for your music, interests, television shows and what not, while feeding you information on other users via newsfeed (which most of us spend hours reading and do not know why). While Google+ uses circles, streams and sparks. Circles are where you place people, Google+ allows you to place people based on what you want to share with them, rather than having to go through the tedious task of blocking and limiting individuals on Facebook. Circles is great for me because right now I am using Twitter, Digg and Stumbleupon to gather individuals who enjoy my articles. Google+ Circles allows me to have a separate section for individuals that request me based on my articles if they wish.
Constantly throughout the day I am logging into 10-15 different social networking sites in order to share the articles and our information. Streams and Sparks allows people to connect on the basis of similar interests by using the same basic formula as Facebook’s newsfeed and “like” button as well as Twitter’s #trends.
Some of you may have noticed a small +1 button on websites when you search Google. In preparation for Google+, Google released its +1 button as a way for users to submit their
approval of web pages. Now it will work as the Google+ “like” button as well. Stephen Levy, wrote all about Google+ and where it came from, where it’s going and most importantly where it is right now.
“Right now, Google won’t even suggest who should be in your circles. But it has the technology to do so — it’s already making suggestions on which you might include on Gmail mailing lists. So in the future it’s conceivable that Google might indeed provide plenty of nonbinding suggestions for who you might want it your Circles. “We’ve got this whole system already in place that hasn’t been used that much where we keep track of every time you e-mail someone or chat to them or things like that,” says Smarr. “Then we compute affinity scores. So we’re able to do suggestions not only about who you should add to a circle, or even what circles you could create out of whole cloth.” Another twist is that people in your circles don’t have to be members of Google’s social net. If Aunt Mary refuses to opt in, you can include her anyway, and she can still get the pictures you post to the circle via e-mail.” (Stephen Levy, Wired)
That works out great. Everyone has e-mail and by adding specific addresses to specific circles
on Google+ I will be able to utilize email forwarding without plugging in an entire address book. I pick the circle, assign the friends and just keep adding. To me dragging and adding is more convenient than typing and assigning.
Why did I decide to join Google+? Well for me it works because of my lifestyle. I enjoy film, photography, and writing. Google+ allows me to share my films/edited videos, photos and articles with the entire web, rather than just my Facebook friends. Also it’s great because Google+ is part of one of the biggest search engines in the technological world, Google.
For me it makes sense to have everything at your fingertips. The BQB is a Google News
affiliated site so perhaps that is why we were able to take part in the early phase of Google going social with Google+. On Wired a quote stuck out on the side of Stephen Levy’s post, Shimrit Ben-Yair the product manager in charge of the social graph said it perfectly, ‘On Facebook I overshare. On Twitter, I under share. If Google hits that spot in the middle, we can revolutionize social interaction.’
Google+ may be that middle spot, after all it is designed to operate for the monster search engine Google; you know where people go to find the hottest news, trending topics and latest fads. For me the phrase work smarter not harder embodies Google’s latest venture into social networking, Google+.
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