Google+ Me = TLF?
by Amy LaniganWednesday, July 20th, 2011
Google+ is on the brink of 10M users. After I received the coveted, Willy Wonka golden ticket, access to Google+ it’s 10M + 1. I’m in.
I dragged and dropped colleagues (we digital geeks are in Google+ in full force) and friends into circles. I hung out in Hangouts (my favorite feature) and scrolled through Sparks. I floated like I was in a neighborhood without the grounding of profile houses.
Then I logged out and watched my Facebook wall scroll with Google+ opinions.
What is Google+? David Pogue of the New York Times explains it well.
The top seven things that strike me:
1. Exclusive invites: Google excels at invitation-only. Gmail invitees forgot to care that their emails were being used for ad targeting. We still don’t mind. The club with the red rope is enticing. Even if we don’t know what’s inside.
2. The “not yet public” launch: Google has downplayed this launch. The NYT blogger above stated “it’s unfair to mention bugs because the service isn’t even public yet.” Really? Put a product launch behind a invitation wall, say it’s just a part of a bigger whole and people will concede on criticism. Brilliant.
3. Aimed at Facebooks’ achilles: Circles within Google+ strike Facebook where it’s weak – filtering and content distribution to specific friend networks. Within 3 minutes I could see streams of content coming only from my work connections. It’s easy.
Plus drag and drop is fun. Remember when digital driving what happened offline was exciting? Now we’ve moved on to Smart Phone and tablets changing the way people interact with computers. Polyvore caught on early. Now it’s everywhere.
If they want to issue a double blow, Google+ needs to kick in search. Hard. Facebook is notoriously lacking in search. (Does anyone else love that the Google+ name can be rough in search because the + can be a command or a proper noun?)
