Google+ – Review after 2 weeks

If your a techie, or you have a techie friend, you have probably heard about Google+, Google’s newest social media project. In their traditional form, as the masters of creating Buzz, Google rolled this product out to a select few who could in turn invite friends. Much like the roll out of Google Wave. With Wave, many of us were begging and pleading to be let in, this test launch was just as crazy, maybe even a little more so, as just having an invite did not guarantee you would get in, they kept opening and closing the system to new people.

On first look, Google+ is clean and simple, you have circles for categorizing how you know people; you use these circles to decide who you wish to share information with, or whose info you want to read. The funny thing is that Facebook offers this same kind of tuning, yet it is far from easy to figure out. With Google+ you drag and drop people to a circle, you can make more circles easy and you can pick and choose the circles you wish to share info with.

Google+ also integrates with Picasa which has an awesome desktop version that makes for seamless uploading of pictures and managing them. The thing that frustrates most people about Facebook is the complexity of security and dealing with friends, Google+ has made this a no brainer. Google+ also lacks the silly games (who knows we may see these down the line) I speculate that games will be added more part of the chrome browser then in the Google+ environment. I found this great Infographic by TechnoBombs that shows side by side the differences and how they stack up against each other. There is speculation that Google+ will be the fastest growing of the social media platforms to date, and I believe it as it is growing daily at an amazing pace. The interface is the least cluttered and smoothest running, and sometimes the simplicity of a platform will be reason enough for so many to embrace it. You don’t have to worry if yor sharing pictures of the family or that weekend party with customers, you just pick the circles to share those picts with.  Granted we are still in the infancy of this new toy, but so far I have to say that if you are given a chance to get into it, dive in and play. Feel free to + me.