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:
- Being able to post directly from my site to Google+ would be
nice (roll on the API release!)
- The next lot of improvements & fixes.
- The mobile app to work (please please please!)
- Proper sharing to Twitter & Facebook (so it doesn't take a
couple of clicks - I'm lazy!)
- My wife deciding that she'll join after all (I think she'll
like it).
- The battle that will undoubtedly happen once Google+ goes
mainstream and whether it will rival Facebook (I think it
will).
- 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).
- Where is Stephen Fry? ;)
I'll do another update in a month or so I recon.