G+ Impressions

I've been playing around with Google+ the last few days and I think it shows promise. But being that it's in limited preview and almost none of the features are anywhere near complete, it's going to be a while before we can tell if it works.

 

I love the concept of circles (yes, you can have "groups" of friends in Facebook but it's very clunky and circles is built into the core design of G+). It works very well and the younger generation is going to love it because you can isolate your parents like the viruses they are :)  lol No more kegger photos for mom! And for me, I'm pretty sure many of my friends don't care about backpacking or weasel-tossing, so I can spare them that stuff. Ok, I made up the weasel-tossing, but you get the picture.

 

Effectively it looks a lot like Facebook, and you can view your entire feed if you like, but you can also view the thread of your feed from just one circle, which is a slick filter. So if I had a circle for "Wild Reunions", for example, with all my family in there (remember you can plop your contacts into multiple different circles), and if I want to share info like we do on our Facebook page now, I just post it to that circle only. Nobody else can see it. Nifty cool.

 

And your circle information can be completely private so your contacts don't know which circles you have them in. So you could make a circle called "Losers" and included peeps would be none the wiser.

 

I also really like "Sparks", which is a way to discover cool new stuff to share.

 

There is currently no iOS app, but one is coming. And the web app kinda stinks. Oh, and, minor detail, almost nobody is on the network yet.

 

So my bottom line so far: I see lots of potential, especially if they develop the core concepts which are fantastic, and avoid feature bloat and complexity.

 

If any of you peeps wants to try it, I'll send you an invite. But remember, it's like a house under construction with no walls and no people yet. But the framework is good, I think.