my first days with Google+

So the first few days of hectic testing, screaming and craziness are over. I finally had some time to sit and think about the first impressions of Google’s latest and final run into the social network field. And Google+ (say: googleplus) started with a bang! Right now it is still closed and only for some people open (lucky me) but it will roll out constantly. Here are my first thought and impressions on big G’s latest toy.

google+ profile

The better facebook

The headline says it all. Almost everybody I spoke to on or about Google+ was impressed by google’s latest blast against facebook. It is fast, easy to handle, intuitive and has some incredible easy and yet powerful features implemented of which you think after seeing them “why didn’t I miss this on facebook?”

Circles of trust

The main difference to facebook are obviously the so called circles where you organize your friends. Stuff you then share can be shown to the public (like on twitter) or to selected circles (a bunch of contacts) or singly selected friends. To add friends or contacts to your circles you simply drag and drop them via Ajax into the designated circles. Checkboxes are uncool. Yo!

google plus data liberation - download your data!

Data liberation!

Yeah..Google and data…but this time in a positive way! Google+ lets you download and save all your stored data to your computer. That is quite a cool and nice feature that should be offered by every social network. Since it is my data that is stored online I would like to download it on my convenience.

Furthermore the privacy regulations and settings are quite easy to access and not as much hidden as on the big rival facebook. Another + for Google.

Bar integration & navigation

google webbar

When rolling out Google+ Google  also pimped his appearance and the Google account bar that is shown on top of each Google Service page when you are logged in. It allows you to access all Google services very quickly and also shows you latest notifications of Google Plus when you are not actively in it. You can see incoming notifications while you are in google mail, google documents or all other services. The notification simply appears in the right corner and you can respond to it immediately. As easy as 1, 2, 3.

Hanging out is…well…hanging out.

The last very cool feature I will mention today are the hangouts. Hangouts are video chatrooms that you can open via a simple click. You can almost literally hang out with your chosen friends / contacts (circles). Pretty cool and very useful feature that – once more – makes you wonder why no other social network already implemented this feature.

The Problem

There are two main problems that appear right now. Number one: It is a google product. There are so many google haters out there and a lot of bad news about the guys from mountain view that you either love or hate them. That makes it quite hard to convince those people that are no fans or curious geeks I think. Their first question might be: But I also have profiles on facebook, hi5 or whatever…why another one? The above mentioned advantages might sounds useful for geeks and freaks like us but do you think they are easy to explain to non-tech-savvy users? I am not quite sure about it.

Problem number 2 goes hand in hand with problem number 1. Google+ is not hip enough to kick facebook hard enough in the ass. As already mentioned Google Plus is a great thing for people who take the time to give it a try. But it is neither fancy nor super stylish or has any big brand ambassadors (as far as I know). So I guess there won’t be a big run away from Facebook to Google Plus. It might be a slow progress.

Bottom line

Besides those mentioned features Google+ comes with a bunch more useful features. For example can you see more profile information by simply hovering over the picture of your contact. No need to surf to his or her profile site. You can manage your circles quite easily and sharing with people outside of Google+ is a one click move as well….

So where does this leave us? Will everybody leave facebook in order to hang out in Google+. Surely not. Even though, speaking right now, I wouldn’t mind. Development however showed us that people need time to adapt things and stick to stuff they are used to. Nevertheless I think Google Plus has a huge potential and will convince almost every user. Despite those big Google-Haters. They, of course, won’t change their mind and call this the next step to Google’s bad data collection initiative.

I am quite happy with Google’s latest social network attempt and hope that I will – unlike wave (which was a great product too – but no social network) – be another successful piece in Google’s step towards world domination.