My First Impressions of Google+

As many of you know by now Google+ is a reality, today it had about 10 million users.  Not bad for two weeks and available only through invitation.  Yesterday the g+ iPhone application was also released to the public.  I can summarize up Google+ as a network that combines Facebook’s posting and commenting features; Twitter’s openness to the way people can follow you;  Skype’s video conferencing and flickr’s photo-sharing capabilities. 

Google+ came up with a concept called “Circles”.  You can create as many “Circles” as you want and group people where you believe they best fit.  Using “Circles” allows you to only post to specific groups of people.  This way you can post separately and privately to your family “Circle”, or specific posts to a group of people that you believe might be interested in that topic, or simply go public and publish to everyone, friends or just acquaintances.

Many people are talking about Google+ coming out to take over Twitter and Facebook, similarly to what happened to MySpace.  My initial thought is that this will not happen, but it has certainly shown the potential to be a really beneficial social media network to be used together with Twitter and Facebook (at least those are the two I use the most for personal and professional reasons).  Lots of Mothers are in Facebook and they have become very familiar and comfortable with the network as a way of following their friends and family.  So I find it very difficult for people to drop it because it has really become a family and friend cyber-gathering place. 

On the other hand Twitter is a very useful social media tool and you won’t see me or people and businesses just quitting.  Professionally Twitter is a very active social network to keep up with happenings related to my profession and the digital world itself.  I can easily follow clients, competition and prospects.

Google+ has taken video chatting to the next level with “Hangouts”, probably one of the coolest features in g+.  It is basically a video conferencing chatting room that can accommodate up to 10 people at a time.  “Hangouts” has the potential to turn into the place to meet people and make new connections.  I will probably be using it to chat with other Google+ users with similar interests, for example, photographers.

Before Google+ goes fully public it will probably include new features, make changes, improve functionality and prevent what ever happened to buzz.  If you need an invite send me an email Joaquin@theduenitas.com