Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Google plus

Google+ is here!! Eventually a social networking site from Google, as expected!!

I am on facebook. Not that I am going to move to Google+ immediately but I certainly want to have a look at what GOOGLE has come up with.

I immediately took a demo. Here are 2 features I found interesting.

Google Plus tour screen

Circles (You can group your contacts using circles)
Well this is exactly I found Facebook lacked in clarity during its initial days. In real life, you don’t share everything about you with everyone you know. There are circles and circles within circles! With facebook, you can do that eventually by using groups but it wasn’t intuitive took me little time figuring it out.


Huddle (You can start a SMS conversation with a group)
Although many smart phones allow you to do it already, I haven’t seen this functionality in any social networking yet.


On the contrary “Hangouts” is something I felt not good from a point of view of keeping your users interested. I said that because as in real life, if these hangouts are public, and someone you really don’t want in, tries to jump in then the spirit of hangout gets killed. I am really interested in how this feature is received.



Although the site is not open it for everyone yet, you can register your email address to be kept posted.

Facebook is certainly picking up in Japan against some local social networking sites. Will be interesting to see how Google plus performs here.

I am looking forward to it.