After almost a week, I'm beginning to form impressions of Google's new service -- mostly positive ones -- and even if I don't have all the answers, I have lots of questions.
PCWorld - I've been using Google+ a lot since it was announced last Tuesday, but I haven't written much about it yet. There are a number of reasons why I've been semi-mum. For one thing, I have a lousy track record when it comes to gut reactions about Google social services. I thought Buzz was intriguing, and I didn't instantly figure out the privacy issues. And I had visions of Google Wave leading to an epic war between Google and Microsoft.
I don't completely blame myself for failing to instantly figure out that Buzz and Wave would be very nearly DOA. The most important part of social networks is the social aspect, and that's impossible to judge from a demo or a closed beta test. And since Google+ still isn't open to the general public, it's still early to be rendering any sort of long-range verdict on it.
Still, after almost a week, I'm beginning to form impressions of this service -- mostly positive ones -- and even if I don't have all the answers, I have lots of questions.
Such as:
Was Google's rollout strategy smart?
If Google+ had debuted a couple of years ago, Google would have held a big press bash at the Googleplex to announce this thing. It would have set expectations high, and said that it would be rolling out to the entire planet within a couple of weeks. Instead, it kept things low key; all the celebration that the launch got was a blog post and a few videos. And then Google let in all the people (like, um, me) who would have attended the press event that didn't happen, and has intermittently allowed us to invite other people. I imagine that Google is pleased with how that strategy has panned out: nearly everyone who's using the service and writing about it seems to like it. But Google and everybody else won't have a strong sense of how much normal people like it until it's open to the general public.
Are Circles actually appealing?
Large parts of the G+ interface are borrowed directly from Facebook. (If you use Chrome, you can even make G+ look almost exactly like Facebook.) The asymmetric nature of relationships -- I can follow you without permission, and you don't need to follow me back -- is much like Twitter. But one core Google+ concept is new. It doesn't just let you create groups of friends, like Facebook does. It forces you to do so, since "adding" someone to Google+ involves assigning them to a Circle.
Google's theory is that people want to share certain stuff with their family members, other items with college buddies, still other matters with their coworkers, and so forth. Could be. It's somewhat difficult to tell until Google+ is open to the public and fills up with family members, college buddies, coworkers, and other random folk. More
