Anyone else playing around with this? When I read the blurb it just looked like another social media googfail, but actually using it I can see some potential. The core parts are it's 'circles' - pots you put contacts in, such as a 'friends' circle, a 'family' circle, a 'company a' circle, etc. which are actually quite user friendly, and superior to FB when it comes to securing content. There are also 'sparks' which are essentially feeds of things you're interested in, these don't come across as all the great to be honest. Maybe after a bit more playing. There are also going to be 'huddles', not seen any functionality for that yet though.
The thing with Google is that enough people utilize legitimate Google services for business that if they do this "right" they can span several market segments. There are a few important goals here though: Increase search quality by looking for "social signals". Search quality is the backbone of Google's value - what allows them to make money from advertising. (Of course, this just invites "social spam" in an effort to manipulate social signals. Aaron Wall did a great job discussing that in his blog on Google requiring social spam. Avoid spam by utilizing the vast amount of information it has on users; let them send social signals through a controlled social network instead of a third party network like FB, Twitter, or Foursquare. Gather revenue from its social network. The market segments that they can span are business and personal use - essentially LinkedIn and FB, since so many people use google docs for business collaboration and so many people use gmail for personal use (and business/non-profit). The deal is... Google basically just copied FB's interface. I've seen 50 articles on that and they all agree. I wonder when the lawsuits start?
Well, for me the killer app of social media is unifying several forms of communication - Facebook is essentially Hotmail on steroids, merging email, IM and blogging/microblogging - and Google+ rolls webcasting and videoconferencing in that, which is the sort of thing that makes it useful for internal comms in a company. I'm expecting it to turn into a corporate tool, along the lines of a GSA or mini, where you plug a box into your network, apply some configurations and voila! You have a ready-made intranet with security restrictions allowing you to extend it into extra- and internet zones. You could roll a lot into that, the kind of things that would start treading on the toes of SharePoint and SAP.
They stopped invites for a while - they couldn't handle the load. I guess they should have used Amazon's cloud. easy scalability!
Not sure where you got your info here... this is not a load issue. They are still testing & tweaking the experience and they are waiting to make sure the experience is well refined. I've been using it since the field trial launch day and there's been no performance issues for me, nor have I seen anything at all in the press about performance problems... and believe me, it would be reported on if it was happening. Again, not sure where you are getting your information, or if you've actually used it, but I'm not sure what is copied about the interface. What's the same? Sure, it has a stream of posts like facebook, but that's really the only similarity that I can tell (and even then the ui for the stream is different). Furthermore, the whole concept of a feed or a stream is not unique to facebook... it's a basic concept of any web app with user-posted content (like, this forum for example).
No way, Facebook invented the idea of displaying the most recent content, then time travelers copied it from the future and put it in forum software before Facebook was invented!
There is a way to send out invites, even though the official procedure is suspended. You share a post and enter the gmail address of someone who isn't a member. After a couple of hours, they'll get a link emailed to them which will allow them to sign up.
Actually the direct "invite" mechanism has always been disabled. The method you described was on at first but got turned off after a while. You can share with people who don't have google+ (it sends them an email), and the link in that email will take them to a page that may or may not allow signup (I think they have been turning it off and on as they want to allow more testers in). Last time I tried it, it was disabled, but I wouldn't be surprised if they turned it on again soon (or have since the last time I tried it).
I got my invite last week, I think... didn't realize what it was for at first. Still have some, but waiting to send them to people that will use google+ not just accept it and not do anything with it.
Don't even fucking go there. I'm dreading the day some fucknugget decides Google+ would be a great way to go in order to move us towards the Cloud while not having any fucking idea what that really means.
Not a huge fan of Google (I'm sure one or two posters here have figured that out) but I like to explore their stuff before I pass judgment. Still waiting on a Google+ invite to come my way.
Ok got my invite, joined, and now am trying to figure this thing out. To me it looks like Google's answer to facebook as has already been noted. I'm still trying to figure it out and see how I can make it work for me.
I've got one. Still messing around and trying to find people. Not of much use when you only have about 5 friends on there atm.
I thought Orkut was Google's answer to Facebook?* Google managed to put the beatdown on Mapquest, IMO. But in the end they wound up buying out YouTube because they were too established for GooTube (or whatever they were calling it) to horn in (and it didn't provide a significant advantage over YouTube). I think if Google wants into social networking (and they can afford it) they're going to have to pony up and buy Facebook. *Yeah, I'd never heard of it either.
I like the circles but I would rather see facebook just integrate the idea. Adding another webpage to the mix doesn't sound great.
I look at it this way. Myspace was our first venture into Social Networking.... Facebook was a bit more grown up, and now Google+ COULD be the next step.... The idea of completely separating Friends, Work, Family and Acquaintances is REALLY appealing.
Yes that idea is appealing, and since everyone is already on facebook I would like to see them steal that idea and use it.
FB already has something similar they call 'lists' but they are buried and clumsy. Mark Zuckerberg has announced in the past that he wants people to share as much as possible so hasn't really put much effort into restricting sharing. Now that's coming back to bite him, as pretty much Circles are all anyone is talking about with G+. Yeah, it's just a beta, but so far that's all I've really found useful. You can bet FB has half a dozen teams working on beefing up it's 'lists' feature and making it a central aspect of the site.
One of the things that sucks is that you can't set lists as distribution points for status updates, links, etc - even though you can set updates (on a case by case basis) to show to specific people. It's lame, and you're right - it will be fixed.
If anyone doesn't have one and needs an invite, just send me your email. I don't mind sending invites.
