jun 30, 2011 - What Google+ Is All About

Description:

On Tuesday, Google announced a restricted-access introduction of its new social network, Google+, pronounced “Google plus.” A relatively small number of people were invited to join the network.

Then, on Wednesday evening, some Google+ users realized that they were suddenly able to give out what seemed to be an unlimited number of invitations to other people by e-mail. Twitter and Facebook exploded with people begging for access.

Wednesday night, Google turned off new signups due to what the company’s vice president of social called “insane demand.”


SOCIAL NETWORKS
The way people connect digitally.

If you did get in, or if you sign up when Google again allows new users, you’ll see that Google+ looks a lot like Facebook but that it has three major differences in the way it works. Google spokespeople have said Google+ is intended for sharing with smaller, more closely aligned sets of people, rather than posting everything to everyone as is common on Facebook.

The most important difference is that Google+ isn’t based on two-way “friend” relationships. Instead of making friends, users create groups of other users — “Circles,” in Google lingo. These people don’t need to approve the move, but they don’t grant you any special access to them just because you’ve put them in your Best Friends Forever circle. They can even ignore you without you knowing it. Likewise, putting several people into a circle doesn’t connect them to one another the way a Facebook group does. It’s more like a Facebook list. The circle is for your convenience only, so you can share things with all of them, or see their own updates, as a group.

Second, when posting to your Stream, the page of your posts which resembles a Facebook wall, Google+ encourages you to carefully choose which Circles and individuals the posts are shared with. On Facebook, you can similarly fine-tune who does and doesn’t see each of your status updates — click Facebook’s lock icon below the status input box, and choose Customize to enter friends, networks, and lists to add or block. But it’s complicated on Facebook. Google+ puts the sharing options in your face, to encourage you to think actively about sharing some things with one circle of people, some with others.

Third, Google+ conspicuously lacks its own person-to-person message system. You can share something with just one person, and converse back and forth in the comments, but there isn’t yet another inbox that you’re expected to use instead of your existing email account.

Besides Circles and your Stream, Google+ has several other main components. Sparks is a searchable news feed in which items can be shared to your Circles or people. You can pin your personal interests to keep on top of them, and no one else will be able to see your guilty pleasures. Hangouts are group video chats in which up to 10 people can see and talk to one another. You can also create a Huddle, a group SMS conversation of members whose mobile phone numbers are available. Admittedly, when I tried it, my friends were confused as to what was going on, because they’re not accustomed to a three-person text conversation on their phone screen.

A Google+ app for Android includes instant photo and video uploading. Sorry, there’s no iPhone app yet.

A nice nerdy touch: You can scroll your Stream up and down by pressing the j and k keys on your computer keyboard.

The company has posted an interactive product guide that’s a good start for figuring out what you can do.

Google+ is a work in progress, so there’s lots of room for improvement. Want to complain? Click the gear icon in the upper right corner and choose Send Feedback. You can draw on the screen to highlight your problem, and type in a problem description.

Here’s my own gripe: The big menu that lets me choose whom to share with is too hard to dismiss. I have to click on another part of the screen, but if I click the most intuitive location –- the exact same place I clicked to pop it up –- that doesn’t work. Surely that’s fixable.

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