As a former Facebook user and a admittedly ashamed former MySpace member (you were on it too in 2005), I recently joined Google Plus. My expectations were rather low, as I had little use for social networking at the time and was joining largely out of a desire to see what Google might do with a social networking website. I’ve been ‘using’ it for a month now, and with Google rolling out the ability to search through your networks, now seems like a good time to evaluate what is good and what isn’t about the new site..
Let’s start with the good: I like the idea of friend circles, rather than just having a general population of friends. This is a more intuitive design that fits better with how most people’s lives are arranged. We have people we work with, people we go to school with, relatives along with groups of friends and acquaintances and they don’t always mix. By allowing them to be grouped, it allows for a more organized, natural feel. Secondly, the layout and feel of Google Plus is rather simple and well designed. The interface is clean and loads relatively quickly, as you would expect from Google – something that can’t always be said for Facebook (I won’t even bother with you, MySpace). Lastly, one of the main things I’ve used Google Plus for is storing my pictures and they all look great on my profile. Basically, it does largely what it has been intended to do.
Now, the bad news: The first thing I noticed when I joined and started poking around was how few people I could find that were using the site. Not only are the number of people on it small, but it appears that their user activity is relatively limited, as well. I’ve had surprisingly little interaction over the past month with anyone I know, or even don’t know, through Google Plus. That’s a particular advantage of Facebook, which may have its own issues but was rarely without anything of interest to draw people to the site. Secondly, the design of Google Plus sort of feels like it might be enhancing that lonely feeling. Sure Google found several suggestions for me to add as a friend instantaneously, but after that, I started searching for Larry Page and Sergey Brin just to see who else might be on the site.
Overall, it seems to be a highly functional website that happens to be a social networking website. Perhaps the feeling that you are exploring the lonely frontier of the internet will go away with time, as the site builds up users, especially following the announcement that Google Plus now claims 90 million users, with 60 million visiting daily. Right now though, I have a hard time seeing what those 60 million people are doing with it each day. Still, it’s a useful and well-made attempt at Social Networking for the most part, just don’t expect to spend too much of your life using it, social networking for non-social people.
