Diary

Now I've had a bit of time to play with it - I thought I'd sit down and write out how I'm getting on with Google+. I have to say, so far, I really like it. They seem to have learnt a lot from their previous mistakes and even at this early stage it feels much more like a product than Wave did in the early days.

The thing I really like about it... The people who are on here so far. I'm sure that'll change as it gets more and more popular - but if you look at the list of people in the UK on http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/ I'd say 90% of them are in the geek business in one form or another. It's like a playground for geeks (long may that last!)

I've not tried the Hangouts yet - but if they can up the number of people watching a Live video that would enable some cool live comedy broadcasts (something I'm very interested in at the moment). I recon being able to share a live streaming video with 50 other people would be enough for an online comedy-club type experience.

So - quick round-up of my experiences so far...

The Bad:

It was very quiet to start with. In order to pick things up a bit I went on the findpeopleonplus site and added a few random people who looked like fun and spent a bit of time looking at friends of friends and adding people I knew. I still need more people in my circles but it's certainly helped make the G+ experience more fun. However - this did highlight another issue (which I believe will be fixed in a new release). When one user in your circles is very noisy or popular - they often drown out the others, the solution is going to be the ability to disable certain circles from being displayed in your stream - so I'd be able to create a "Noisy Buggers" circle rather than having to mute noisy posts I'm not interested in.

I don't find the Sparks that interesting or useful - perhaps this will mature over time. At the moment I just don't get it. Maybe it's because it's very USA-centric or maybe I'm just not its target audience. If anyone thinks this is cool and I'm overlooking something amazing - I wait to be taught :)

My Android App doesn't work. It won't let me log in. Keeps telling me I can't until I have an invite. I clearly have an invite. Being honest, Google+ will never replace Facebook & Twitter as my network of choice unless I can use it on my phone. I know other people aren't having this problem, but I am. So there.

The Good:

The UI is lovely, intuitive and nice and clean. I really hope they don't give too much control when the API comes out so that it stays nice (rather than MySpace which went messy fairly quickly as everyone tried to make their profiles "stand out").

Creating Circles is so much easier than Facebook's friend lists.

It's easy to share posts on Twitter & Facebook with the following Chrome extension:  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oenpjldbckebacipkfbcoppmiflglnib#

It's early enough that if you join and do something cool - you may be able to build up an audience. It feels like the start of something special - people are going to make their mark using Google+ and it'll be really interesting to watch that happen.

It's full of geeks!

The Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Being able to post directly from my site to Google+ would be nice (roll on the API release!)
2. The next lot of improvements & fixes.
3. The mobile app to work (please please please!)
4. Proper sharing to Twitter & Facebook (so it doesn't take a couple of clicks - I'm lazy!)
5. My wife deciding that she'll join after all (I think she'll like it).
6. The battle that will undoubtedly happen once Google+ goes mainstream and whether it will rival Facebook (I think it will).
7. Being able to search my GMail contacts (I don't have an @gmail but an @mydomain.com and it won't access those for some reason).
8. Where is Stephen Fry? ;)

I'll do another update in a month or so I recon.

I finally got my invite to Google+ (which I am referring to as Google++) Thanks Kim! I was in two minds about joining as I was an early adopter of Google Wave which I liked (and look what happened to that!)

So I joined. Because I'm a sucker for new tech. however the problem I have at the moment (and the problem I know a lot of people had with Google Wave) is that I can't find many people I know on there... Possibly because I have no friends, or possibly because I'm lazy and want it to tell me who I already know based on existing contacts within Facebook, Twitter etc.

I'm guessing the reason why you can't search your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts is because they won't let Google do so? Which is annoying as I'll have to start manually building up contacts on there.

The other thing which is frustrating is that I can't see any way to get a simple link to my profile (like www.facebook.com/owenniblock) which would be nice for posting to other places. However I will make one with my url shortner - so there (when I work out what the actual public url for my profile is?).

The big question is, what does Google++ give us that we can't get from Facebook? Well it's probably better written and the UI is certainly very nice. I'm guessing Google learnt a lot from the initial usability and slowdown issues on the Wave and it all seems pretty responsive so far. The video stuff looks exciting (not used it yet) and so it's no suprise that Facebook have announced a Skype deal recently...

I guess the other thing they're trying to show is better/different is the privacy stuff. The concept of Circles is smart and the UI is great (loving the drag and drop). Much better than the Friend List concept in Facebook. I'm pretty sure this will become a feature I love (much like the Labels concept in GMail).

That's my first reaction to it. Google++ seems cool, very well written and slick however time will tell whether (a) It gets enough users to rival Facebook and (b) They sit it out and commit enough to it that people commit to them. If they give up on it like they did to Google Wave I won't be back on the Google train in a hurry!

Will report back after I've been using it a while.