Dani 3.0

I was fortunate enough to get an invite yesterday to Google+ from one of my Twitter buddies and I’ve pretty much spent all my spare time since then on the site. The odd thing is that on the face of it, there’s nothing overly compelling about Google+. In fact, I find the barrage of information sort of overwhelming. (Although, to be fair, I find the barrage of information on Facebook overwhelming as well.)

There are plenty of articles on the web that explain what Google+ is and how to use it, so I’m not going to cover that. Rather, this will be a brief overview of my impressions.

First, I rather like that Google+ seems to be a cross between Twitter and Facebook. It’s like Twitter in that if you share something as public, then anyone on Google+ can comment. I like the openness and network building this encourages. It’s like Facebook in that I can keep posts restricted to particular groups, or Circles, such as friends, family, or even individual users. I also like that I can just click the name of the stream I want to see and everyone else is filtered out.

The Sparks feature is a favorite of mine – sort of a keyword-centric, curated Google Reader stream that resides unobtrusively on the left side of the page, waiting for a click. Hangouts, a group video conferencing tool, has been a big favorite of everyone else except me, mostly because I don’t feel like bothering with hair or makeup to talk tech.

Photos is where Google+ really shines, though. Tightly integrated with Picasa Web, Google’s online photo service, the interface is snappy and slick. Photo comments are listed to the right, and tagging and EXIF information are available as well. If you’re lucky enough to have an Android phone, you can choose to have any photos you take from your phone instantly available to your Google+ account (they’re set to private by default.)

I’m still getting my feet wet and there’s a lot to discover. I think it’s early yet to tell if Google+ will be a “Facebook killer” but its strong privacy controls, as well as the Google Takeout feature (you can export all your data and take it with you) make it a strong alternative to those that have concerns over Facebook’s usage of personal information. As of today, Google+ is a hit, but that probably has a lot to do with the fact that most of these early adopters are techies. I look forward to seeing how it develops as more diverse groups of people join and utilize it in real-world situations.