# New social network - Google Plus (Google+)



## Nick (Jun 29, 2011)

Did anyone catch this yesterday...  again being kind of a tech nerd i find this interesting. I'm still trying to grab an invite 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html

But I really like the idea. It's like Facebook but it feels more decentralized. There are some neat ideas that I think set it apart from FB, for example the Circles where you can group your contacts into more logical order. I.E. instead of 200 "friends" you have groups - like family, close friends, acquaintances, etc. - so you can share with specific groups. Facebook kind of has this (I have people grouped) but it's a PITA to organize them. 

The web conference / hangout thing looks kinda neat too. I have a webcam on the computer but almost never use it. But it would be kinda cool to have it available so people can just chat with you whenever, and I think it supports 10 people. 

Anyone get an invite yet to try it? Looks like it could be promising. I don't use FB all that often now. I guess I like some of the smaller chat and discussion features that are more ad-hoc - , I always find it annoying when you want to go do something with friends and there are 1000 emails flying back and forth.


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## Glenn (Jun 29, 2011)

It will certainly be interesting to see if this gains some traction. What was their first attempt at a social network? I can't recall the name right now.


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## Nick (Jun 29, 2011)

Glenn said:


> It will certainly be interesting to see if this gains some traction. What was their first attempt at a social network? I can't recall the name right now.



Buzz, it was horrible. 

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## o3jeff (Jun 29, 2011)

Good timing, I think I heard on the news recently Myspace is laying off a lot of their workforce.


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## wa-loaf (Jun 29, 2011)

These guys seem pretty happy with it so far: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/29/google-plus-is-actually-pretty-good/


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## riverc0il (Jun 29, 2011)

Interface looks slick but mostly looks like it suffers from all the things that make Facebook suck still. At the least, it should provide for some innovation since Facebook really did not have any competition and dominated by default due to mass adoption rather than having the best product. Looks like Google is going more with a Twitter approach of short hits even worse than Facebook. Those videos were more conversational IM's. IM has been around forever and suddenly it is new again because it is in a browser instead of an IM client? The real power Google has is linking services into this like Picasa, YouTube, Blogger, Docs etc. They are really working towards a completely dominant platform. And since their platform isn't tied to an OS, they won't get in trouble for it like MS did, heh. Oops, I guess there is that whole Droid thing.... uh oh. :lol:

I think overall that social networking is moving away from both social and networking into straight up 24/7 communications. Networking involves depth and response and involvement. I didn't see anything like that in those Google videos and you certainly don't get that in Facebook. Facebook is scary how well it can map your past relationships but it fails at creating future one's. I've met tons of people from forums but I have never created a single new acquaintance in Facebook. Facebook is far better at connecting and networking you with businesses than anything else at this point. Opt in marketing and brand allegiance. Maybe it is just all my friends on Facebook are just boring and never post anything interesting? Or perhaps the concept in idealization is always better than in practice, thus most people I know put down FB while still using it heavily. All very wacked out stuff. I just hope it progresses and does something interesting.

I guess I am just pissed off that Facebook stole the life out of LiveJournal where I used to be able to read post and thoughts of interest rather than banter and live updates and mostly crap I could care less about. FB actually works great as a RSS feed aggregator.


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## andyzee (Jun 29, 2011)

I'd love to work for Google, right now they have to be one of the most innovative companies out there.


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## Nick (Jun 30, 2011)

I just got an invite !

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## Nick (Jun 30, 2011)

If anyone wants an invite just launch me a PM with your email address and I'll send one your way.


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## wa-loaf (Jun 30, 2011)

Nick said:


> If anyone wants an invite just launch me a PM with your email address and I'll send one your way.



Temporarily exceeded their capacity try again soon. :-(


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## Nick (Jun 30, 2011)

I read that if it says that you can just try in a few hours and it might work. I wonder what the criteria is for that.


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## bvibert (Jun 30, 2011)

I tried to send a few messages out too, and they got the same message.  Guess I just barely made it in before they locked it down.  I wonder if this is going to turn out like that Google Wave invite I got a while back??? :-?


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## Nick (Jun 30, 2011)

Yeah, I was on Wave too, which turned out to be a bust. I could have seen it being very sueful for work related communication but alas, it went the way of the Dodo.


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## wa-loaf (Jul 6, 2011)

It's boring there, someone else join already.


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## o3jeff (Jul 6, 2011)

How do I join?


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## Nick (Jul 6, 2011)

Yeah pretty much me, Brian and wa-loaf on there haha


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## bvibert (Jul 6, 2011)

o3jeff said:


> How do I join?



Apparently you have to get lucky and try to join when they have it open.... :-?


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## ctenidae (Jul 6, 2011)

Gotta say, I found the tour interface much more interesting than Google+ itself.


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## wa-loaf (Jul 6, 2011)

o3jeff said:


> How do I join?



pm, your email to me. I'll see if I can make the invite work.


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## o3jeff (Jul 6, 2011)

wa-loaf said:


> pm, your email to me. I'll see if I can make the invite work.



I'm in, Brian sent me an invite. Thanks


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## Nick (Jul 6, 2011)

Add me ... Need more peeps

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## bvibert (Jul 6, 2011)

Woohoo, one more! :lol:


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## o3jeff (Jul 6, 2011)

Everything is starting to link itself together, Your pig picture comes up next to you name on my phone and I have a pic of wa-loaf in his viking hat!


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## bvibert (Jul 6, 2011)

o3jeff said:


> Everything is starting to link itself together, Your pig picture comes up next to you name on my phone and I have a pic of wa-loaf in his viking hat!



Yeah, I'm not sure why it picked the old smiling pig profile picture, but I just rolled with it.  I guess I set my Google profile up with it at some point.


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## Glenn (Jul 7, 2011)

I read that they're nixing all private profiles? If you want it to remain active, you have to go "public" and can hide details from there.


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## o3jeff (Jul 7, 2011)

Can all of us video chat tonight?


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## bvibert (Jul 7, 2011)

Glenn said:


> I read that they're nixing all private profiles? If you want it to remain active, you have to go "public" and can hide details from there.



What do you mean?


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## Glenn (Jul 7, 2011)

bvibert said:


> What do you mean?



I found a link that describes it: 

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/al...ic-private-profiles-deleted-on-july-31st/3111



> In other words, if you’ve been keeping your Google Profile private for the sake of social media invisibility, well - you can’t. Google is requiring that Google+ users be able to at least see that you exist on the network when doing searches. Oddly enough, Facebook still allows users to pull a more complete disappearing actthrough a judicious use of privacy settings.


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## bvibert (Jul 7, 2011)

Glenn said:


> I found a link that describes it:
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/al...ic-private-profiles-deleted-on-july-31st/3111



Interesting.  Thanks for the link.  Doesn't affect me, but I could imagine it will piss some people off.


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## Glenn (Jul 7, 2011)

My FB profile is set to private. You can see that I'm on FB, but aside from some basic interests in my profile pic, that's about it.


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## wa-loaf (Jul 7, 2011)

Glenn said:


> My FB profile is set to private. You can see that I'm on FB, but aside from some basic interests in my profile pic, that's about it.



You can get further locked down than that. So someone searching you won't find you by your name or even if they have your email they can't find you. You won't show up in friend lists either.


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## bvibert (Jul 7, 2011)

Glenn said:


> My FB profile is set to private. You can see that I'm on FB, but aside from some basic interests in my profile pic, that's about it.



Sounds like you'll still be able to setup your Google profile to that level of privacy.  I don't think I share much more to non-friends on my profile either.


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## ctenidae (Jul 7, 2011)

wa-loaf said:


> You can get further locked down than that. So someone searching you won't find you by your name or even if they have your email they can't find you. You won't show up in friend lists either.



That's me- my profile page says nothing- only my name, and I'm by far not the only person with that name.


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## bvibert (Jul 7, 2011)

wa-loaf said:


> You can get further locked down than that. So someone searching you won't find you by your name or even if they have your email they can't find you. You won't show up in friend lists either.



This is the level of privacy that Google seems intent on eliminating.  Being that locked down kind of defeats the purpose of being on a social networking site, IMHO, anyway.  Though I don't really see the harm in letting someone doing so if they so desire.


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## o3jeff (Jul 7, 2011)

bvibert said:


> This is the level of privacy that Google seems intent on eliminating.  Being that locked down kind of defeats the purpose of being on a social networking site, IMHO, anyway.  Though I don't really see the harm in letting someone doing so if they so desire.



Work can check up on you or potential employers looking to see what you're about. Actually the stupid young girl that USED to work here must of thought her page was all locked down, when in fact it wasn't and the shit she used to write about work on her wall and were she really was when she called in sick....


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## bvibert (Jul 7, 2011)

o3jeff said:


> Work can check up on you or potential employers looking to see what you're about. Actually the stupid young girl that USED to work here must of thought her page was all locked down, when in fact it wasn't and the shit she used to write about work on her wall and were she really was when she called in sick....



I understand that, which is why I generally don't post about work.   You can still have it set so that non-friends aren't able to see what's on your wall, without having it appear that you're not even on FB at all.  That's the level we're talking about; making it so that people who are not on your friends list can't even tell that you're on there at all.


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## Glenn (Jul 7, 2011)

I noticed on FB, that you can view your profile as it's seen by others searching for you. I didn't know you could lock it down further. That's good to know. 

And speaking of work...I beleive there are some vendors out there that offer a FB search service/software to check up on potential employees. And here's a does of irony': We couldn't do that at work because FB is blocked.


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## bvibert (Jul 7, 2011)

Glenn said:


> I noticed on FB, that you can view your profile as it's seen by others searching for you. I didn't know you could lock it down further. That's good to know.
> 
> And speaking of work...I beleive there are some vendors out there that offer a FB search service/software to check up on potential employees. And here's a does of irony': We couldn't do that at work because FB is blocked.



I didn't check FB from work for the longest time because I assumed it was blocked or would be soon.  I guess they don't care that much.  Some other random sites are blocked though...


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## riverc0il (Jul 27, 2012)

I take back all my negative commentary from when I first saw the release videos for G+. It is now FAR superior to Facebook. It is Geek Central right now over there (awesome). But aside from the culture of G+, the UI and visual presentation is slick and visually appealing. Folks actually make some well written longer posts. Most of my "friends" on Facebook don't have G+ accounts which is the only draw back. 

But I am confident G+ will continue to add users as word gets out how much better the interface is and how much better the post quality is than Facebook. Android and the integration of all apps Google is certainly going to help that push too. And while both Facebook and Google are both out to monetize your browsing habits, I feel Google is a a little more user friendly and a little less "evil". Facebook just seems hell bent on doing stuff that users don't like. 

It seems the worst thing Google did with G+ was that limited invite only thing when it first started. I know they wanted to get the kinks out. But that really limited the buzz of G+ and limited the amount of folks that eventually got accounts when it opened up. Goodness knows I created an account as soon as I could, didn't like it, and only just went back to try it recently. 

Any ways, give it a try if you haven't yet. G+ does a great job filtering stuff into your stream that is relevant and interesting.


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## bvibert (Jul 31, 2012)

riverc0il said:


> I take back all my negative commentary from when I first saw the release videos for G+. It is now FAR superior to Facebook. It is Geek Central right now over there (awesome). But aside from the culture of G+, the UI and visual presentation is slick and visually appealing. Folks actually make some well written longer posts. Most of my "friends" on Facebook don't have G+ accounts which is the only draw back.
> 
> But I am confident G+ will continue to add users as word gets out how much better the interface is and how much better the post quality is than Facebook. Android and the integration of all apps Google is certainly going to help that push too. And while both Facebook and Google are both out to monetize your browsing habits, I feel Google is a a little more user friendly and a little less "evil". Facebook just seems hell bent on doing stuff that users don't like.
> 
> ...



I agree that it's better than FB.  Aside from being geek central there's quite a bit of interesting photography content on there, if you're into that sort of thing.  I just wish that more people that I actually know would use it, since I don't have any real personal connections there I find myself not using it very much.


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## ScottySkis (Jul 31, 2012)

I will have to check out google plus I guess.


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## Nick (Jul 31, 2012)

Plus AlpineZone is there also 

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## bvibert (Aug 1, 2012)

Nick said:


> Plus AlpineZone is there also



riverc0il, does TheSnowWay.com have a Google+ presence?


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## ctenidae (Aug 1, 2012)

I set up with Google+ when it came out. So far, only one person I've got in my circles is on it, and his posts, while constant, are generally inane Occupy-style drivel.


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## riverc0il (Aug 1, 2012)

bvibert said:


> riverc0il, does TheSnowWay.com have a Google+ presence?


Yes, I setup a G+ account recently and changed up my social networking icons on the site as well. I need to get an auto post setup from TSW to G+ like I have with FB. For now, I am manually updating. I've made a few additional changes to the site to make it more mobile friendly (removed social networking "liking" options from the front page, reduced number of blog posts on the front page, etc.). Still need to figure out how to rework the header menus to make those mobile friendly. It is always something.


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## Nick (Aug 1, 2012)

riverc0il said:


> Yes, I setup a G+ account recently and changed up my social networking icons on the site as well. I need to get an auto post setup from TSW to G+ like I have with FB. For now, I am manually updating. I've made a few additional changes to the site to make it more mobile friendly (removed social networking "liking" options from the front page, reduced number of blog posts on the front page, etc.). Still need to figure out how to rework the header menus to make those mobile friendly. It is always something.



It is always something!

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