By now, I'm sure you've all heard about Google+. Some of you may even be on it. If you are, be sure to add me to your circles - binary phoenix at gmail dot com (you know what to do with that). If you're not, don't ask me for an invite - Google turned them off, so I don't have any to give you. As soon as they're active again I'll let you know.
So, here's what I like about Google+: Circles. I like the ability to split people into "friends," "acquaintences" and "following" and choose to post things only to one group. For instance, I can share family pictures to only my friends, while sharing a blog post to everyone. Yes, I know that Facebook has this capability with the locked post option, but going through and creating groups at this point on Facebook would be really difficult and annoying. I have neither the time or inclination, honestly. Google+ is letting me build it this way from the ground up. I also love the fact that Google doesn't have games, so I don't have to see my friends posting 5,000 times a day about their games (and that's after having blocked the posts from the games themselves). I know they'll be there eventually. And finally hangouts. I love the idea of being able to group video chat with friends or family easily. Since many of my friends and all of my extended family live quite far away, this is a great option to have.
Here's what I don't like about it.
there's no one on it yet. Seriously, it's ridiculous. There are all these really cool features that I can't really test out because honestly, there aren't enough people on Google+ yet to give me a good feel for how they'll work. Seriously Google, open up the invites already and let people on to the service. In the meantime, I'll just keep smiling at this:
Yay.
The other thing everyone was buzzing about yesterday was Facebook's new video chat partnership with Skype. It's totally awesome, because it integrates my largest social network with one of my most used apps, but - it doesn't allow for group video chat. Apparently Mark Zuckerberg missed the memo that social media is all about connecting and sharing with ALL YOUR FRIENDS AT ONCE. Plus, they missed the opportunity to announce the cool new feature BEFORE Google unveiled Google+. I can imagine he's kicking himself about that right now. If they had gotten the news out first, it may have seen like less of a move to keep up with Google's new social network. For those who do want to chat with their groups, Facebook is also releasing the group chat feature to general users, so that you don't have to create a new group just because you want to chat with 4 or 5 friends at once, but it's not video - just regular chat. Facebook fail. They could have done so much more than they did, considering Zuckerberg's speech was about how Facebook is now all about innovation, since they've already gotten the user base. Google+ is focusing on innovation first, and while it seems slow right now, I guarantee they'll get the user base once invites open up. Everyone that I know on Google+ likes it much more than Facebook - maybe specifically because it's not overloaded with business and brands trying to sell themselves in a new advertising forum. Only time will tell.
