Considering the demand, I was lucky enough to snag a Google+ invite yesterday, and after looking around for a bit, I'm unsure what to make of the newest social networking darling. I think my thoughts are largely in line with Ben Parr's on Mashabe: the UI is gorgeous, the drag-and-drop circles is fun if potentially tedious, the video and chat options are intriguing, and the overall Google integration is impressive.
But with Facebook around, I'm not sure what the point of it is.
The allure of Facebook at this point is that everyone is on it: your friends, your enemies, your parents, and your favorite friendly neighborhood corporate entity. Certainly, Facebook is something of a gigantic popularity contest. One builds up a friends list and proceeds to share the ins-and-outs of his or her life for the assembled friends to "like" and comment upon. I didn't much enjoy this process the first time, and I'm hesitant to do it all over again on Google+.
Additionally, my initial impression of Google+ is that it wants to serve as something of a mass RSS feed, e.g., the "Sparks" feature, with a bigger emphasis on sharing and commenting on content from across the internet. This makes sense considering Google is a search entity while Facebook is more concerned with getting members to upload photos from their latest day in the beach.
Sharing is swell, but it almost feels like Google+ wants everyone to be de facto bloggers. Google+ wants its members to use it as an internet hub of sorts. For as open as it has become from its more exclusive origins, Facebook is still a separate entity from the greater internet.
The thing is: I have this blog. Somewhere (if you search hard enough) you can find my personal non-anonymized website. Maybe shifting all my content on Google+ is inevitable, but for now?
All my friends are on Facebook and all my thoughts will remain here. I'll keep playing with circles though...
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