Boy Was I Wrong
Note from 2022 Rachel: File this under things I changed my mind about almost immediately.
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Google Plus is Google, Plus
Here were some of my first thoughts onĀ Google+:
- āHey, it looks kind of like Facebook, but prettier!ā
- āHey, you can share things on it like Facebook, but with different circles of people. Or just one person. Like Gmail!ā
- āHey, wait, what the fuck is a circle? How do I add people?ā
- āHey, alright, I get it. Now Iāve got people in my circle, so how do I share things with them?ā
- āHey, okay, so I post things into this box and hit send to specific groups of peopleā¦ really like Gmail.ā
- āHey, neat, it uses Gchat so I can chat with peopleā¦ like Gmail.ā
- āHey, so itāsā¦ like facebooktwittergmail? Why do I want this?ā
Then I spent four hours on Google+.
Because of the integration with Googleās new topbar, I can absolutely see this being Googleās first successful social media venture. The topbar runs across all of Googleās services. If youāve embraced the new āPreviewā theme, as I have, in Gmail, then the Plus UI is mimicked. Regardless, Iāve been told that notifications still appear in your Gmail interface. So whether youāre in your Gmail inbox or Googling something, your Plus notifications will appear in the topbar, and you can reply to them without ever leaving the service youāre using. You simply click your notification and reply to comments or see your tags, and then go right back to what youāre doing. Itās a brilliant idea, beautifully executed.
And so are the circles, because they recognize your want to share different things with different groups of people, and they make them easy to access and understand. By building in circles as a necessity, rather than a āfeatureā like Facebookās ālistsā, youāre organizing your friends in a way that makes sense, right off the bat. No one uses Facebook ālistsā, but everyone will use Circles - because they have to. This will allow for increased privacy and ease of sharing, two things which Facebook users constantly complain about not having. Granted, the settings are there with Facebook, but in my experience most people find them overly complicated, and difficult to figure out. Settings should be intuitive, and major props go to Google+ for giving the user control without really making them feel like they have to take any extra steps.
TheĀ app for androidĀ is also pretty spiffy, and while I personally donāt want to āHangoutā with my contacts in video-chat windows of (up to) 10 people, I understand why some might find that featureĀ desirable. It also integrates with Google Chat, so all your chat contacts are already available to you in your sidebar. Which is great, because I am an avid user of Google Chat, and pretty much shun all other chat alternatives.
Final thoughts: Yes, this isnāt really different from Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter (or any/all combinations thereof). But the interface is clean, pretty and easy to use, the integration with other Google products is tight but not pushy (unlike Buzz), and social media is fun.
