Didnt think about the men only group. Very good idea Seems you cant do as much as you would like on it unless you have a google email add too. I dont want everything in the same place. I like having my email seperate from everything else
i'm now on it but don't get what it adds what facebook can't do.
Also, not much activity on there, probably because all of my friends so far on there are men and they probably all have brokeback groups like you John!
I like the way it seamlessly integrates into the whole google experience. Being able to have one-way connections with people is good (like on Twitter), so you can list someone as a friend or follow what they're up to without them having to 'accept' a request.
As others have said, it's good to be able to share links/comments with subsets of your friends. I know plenty of people who couldn't care less about my football related updates, so I can just target the relevant people. Similarly with any geeky computer stuff.
The photo sharing is also superior to Facebook. Linking straight to Picasa means I can download full quality versions of my friends' photos.
The 'hangouts' thing looks pretty cool, not that I've tried it out yet.
Just remember, what's at play here is your personal data. Currently, Facebook has the keys to that wealth of information and has locked Google out. Google+ is their attempt to chip away at the immensely valuable information and make it available to their advertisers. They found a way of differentiating their network by attacking Facebook's achilles heal: Facebook is a socially undifferentiated network, so that when you share you're sharing with your friends en masse and not in a more targeted way (this is why Facebook introduced Groups, but it hasn't taken off; Google+ is built around social Circles from the off and has a better chance of solving that problem because of the way they've made sharing with Circles simple). Google+ only has to match Facebook for the things that Facebook does well, then provide that one thing (Circles; Hangouts???) that makes it compelling; if they nail it, they've unlocked the most valuable information there is.
They haven't done so badly so far! If you have a Gmail address, Google indexes your messages and serves ads based on the keywords you write and receive.* When you search, they build up an index of what makes you tick. Writing a letter in Google Docs; great, thanks for the info! When you do this on your Android phone, they know where you are, where you have been and where you are likely going. Google+ is one more piece in this pie. They want to connect data so that they have a handle on how people are related socially. A marketer's dream.
When's the last time you paid your Google bill for these wonderful services? Every time you search, you're in a transaction with Google. They give you a set of answers to your questions. Your giving up your data and they are selling it on. Very clever. I don't think enough people perceive the transaction, certainly most don't see it for what it is. It's not that this is necessarily bad; just one should be aware and make choices about what they are prepared to "trade".
That's not to say it's all sinister; it's not. Google knowing things about you is obviously very useful at times. Personally, I don't quite trust them fully, which I think is a healthy stance. I actually think Apple does a much better job on understanding and protecting privacy, though they can't seem to get their online services right, so that's probably a moot point! We'll see how iCloud works out.
Google makes money like every business on the planet, except they make billions. They sell a product to their customers; their customers pay for that product. But they give all their services away for free. That's because the services aren't their products; we're not their customers. You, me... all of us are their products. They sell access to us to their advertisers and that literally spins money; billions every quarter. The catch is, when push comes to shove, Google's bread is buttered by the advertisers; that's who they are accountable to. Not you or I. We are not their customers, the advertisers are.
*Ever notice and wonder why for many years there was no delete button for emails; the more the merrier! If you delete a message, they don't have access to it and can't index it, which means your using their service without "paying" the price—that's why they gave you, at the time, the unbelievable amount 2GB of storage.
Comments
Seems you cant do as much as you would like on it unless you have a google email add too. I dont want everything in the same place. I like having my email seperate from everything else
Like the way you can have separate circles. A work circle and a Charlton circle, music circle etc. Tempted now.