And unlike its predecessor, Buzz or Orkut, Google did not try to reinvent the wheel this time. Well, they did introduce some really neat concepts that may very well redefine social media.
Roll back to 1 year ago. Following the failure of Orkut and several failed products like Wave and a half crippled Buzz, Google seems doomed to surrender the social web space to Facebook. During this time, the number of facebook users grew from strength to strength. Parents and politicians are all coming online to see what the fuzz is all about, and many of them are hooked.
Just when all hope seems lost, Google strikes back with Google+ (affectionally known, hereafter as G+).
Even though it is a limited trial for now, I see why I will use G+ a lot more than I used facebook. Facebook, for me, is a time waster. My job doesn't depend on it so I just go online occasionally to check out what my friends are doing. When I really need to contact anyone, I resort to email, phonecalls, or even Google Chat. Now, facebook's got chat too although I just naturally reach for my gmail chat instead since that page's almost always on... and my friends are mostly online there anyway.
To endorse my view that facebook is a time waster, I installed the Stay Focused extension to all my Chrome instances and guess which website made it to blacklist first? In fact, I consciously installed Stay focused specifically to limit my time spent on facebook.
If facebook is a time waster, what does that make G+? Well, I regretted joining G+ immediately. Google conveniently inserted G+ notifications into Gmail and the dilemma set in that very instant. Should I blacklist Gmail? That will be difficult since I do use Gmail for serious work.
Turns out G+ is not exactly like facebook although they do look strikingly similar at first glance. G+ organises information into streams which is exactly like facebook. The similarity ends after the first circle.
Circles are central to your G+ experience. They help you organise your contacts into different groups without restricting who or how your choose to organise them.
For a starter, you probably want to differentiate your really close clique, from friends you can put a name to the face, from acquaintances. You may also want to round up immediate family, extended family, then people you usually only meet at a Chinese wedding dinner but did not know exists into different circles. Finally, you may have people you put into different interest circles, e.g. I have one for my running and badminton buddies, and intend to start one as my business contacts start appearing on G+.
To top it all off, but without taking any benefits from this circles, adding users to circles treats you to some really nice animation, as does deleting circles. If anything, this adds some fun to organising your circles.
Now that you have taken the trouble to organise people into circles, its first use is obvious. You can choose specific circles for everything you share in G+. You can also top off the recipient lists with specific people you wish to share that message with.
Starting a conversation in G+ very closely mimic the properties of an email service. The thread starter initiates the list with people he wishes will participate with that specific conversation. So at any one time, any G+ user can participate in different conversations with different groups of people as controlled by the individual who initiated the conversation. Of course, the thread starter can still open his conversation to the general public, just like what most of us ended up doing in facebook.
Other than sharing, circles are also used to organise how your receive conversations. Facebook organises streams either as a public stream or from specific user. G+ circles presents an alternative where you can view streams from specific circles of friends. Depending on how you organise your circles, this feature can be tremendously useful in controlling the message clutter. E.g. with a family outing coming up, I may want to see if any family member has any update or ideas.
Finally, just because someone added you to a circle does not mean you should return favour. It is their decision that they wish to follow your public conversation and to allow you to follow those open to that specific circle. Being in someone's circle is also an abstract concept without telling your friends which circle you put them into. In other words, friendship as defined by circles, just as in real life, are not necessarily reflective.
Google hit a very nice sweetspot with G+. Social does not equal public... at least it is the case outside of college. At least for me, G+ is a closer match to how I manage relationship and conversations outside of social media. I personally see G+ replacing email in most non-confidential conversations I have with my various groups of friends.
I am excited about G+ which very well answered my earlier dilemma. G+ shall, at least for now, be acquitted as a time waster. If I do have time to burn... I can always "hang out" in G+.
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