Saturday, July 9, 2011

Bye Facebook, Hi Google+

Two days in and I'm packing up my Facebook stuff and moving over to Google+.

Even though I haven't tried some of Google+ awesome features such as Hangouts (group video chat) Circles was enough to get me going.

Google's social history is long and painful. Friend Connect, Wave, and Buzz are all high profile failed efforts. None of these "solutions" solve a particular problem.

Seeing other folks typing live in Wave was utterly cool, even mesmerizing at times, but as a service it was no match to existing tools in any particular area.

I tried hard to get the gist of Friend Connect and couldn't. Several years in I still view Friend Connect as a fancy way of subscribing to blogs in Google Reader.

Buzz was a blatant exercise of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if it sticks. It didn't.

Meanwhile Facebook ruled the social arena. It did basic sharing right and demolished all the major competition as a side effect. It ventured into the more advanced area of targeted content sharing with its groups effort and failed miserably.

Enter Google+. With Circles Google goes after the only major Facebook weak spot - targeted content sharing. Circles are easy to grasp, easy to use, and solve a well-known major problem. Once you try it you are sold.

After day one in Google+ I was hopeful the service will take off and fly. After day two I'm confident this is going to be the case.

Goodbye Facebook, hello Google+.

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