Why would I want this when everyone I care about connecting with in this way is already on Facebook...? I'm being serious here. All these "benefits" of Google+Plus seem to be features of Facebook - granted, some of then are a little obtuse, like the whole "lists vs. groups" thing, but they are there, and Facebook is nothing if not prolific with feature rollouts.XKCD covered this. It's true that all those things are on facebook, but fackebook sucks. This really is a lot smoother and the whole notion of 'circles' is built in from the ground up. While facebook has groups/lists they're not very intuitive to use. I remember seeing a friend set a photo gallery to exclude some people and remember thinking she was like the only person who actually used those features.
I also can't stand Google's longstanding habit of opening new products selectively and then making sure that every newspaper published in the English language reports on Google's new product that is awesome but you-can't-have-it.Okay but remember, they tried not doing it with Buzz and it was a disaster. Everyone said they needed to beta test more so that they could get more feedback. But they chose not too. As annoying as it could be for people who want in, this is a little safer for them.
I have an invite but I'm hesitant to join because it wants me to create a public profile.You have to create a profile, but you have to set it to private.
It dawns on me, that it will be sad when it goes live and Google+ is plastered with adsAdblock. Seriously. It's so awesome. You don't even realize how annoying internet ads are until you get rid of them. But G+ may never get too crapped up with ads. Gmail is nearly ad free, just a tiny bar across the top, (if you're not running adblock, that is)
So, people are using their real names for this? Or registering Google Plus accounts pseudonymously? I'm tempted by the seckrit lair quality of the latter, but apparently Google is taking both a dim view and a firm line...Mostly I'm seeing real names. I'm kind of doing both. I'm using the name that I use whenever I need a FirstName LastName combo where I'm using karmakaze as my login/nick. I'm not 100% sure this still qualifies under Google's policy, but I am pretty sure I'm a lot further down the enforcement list than the folks using I.P. Freely or Fakey McFakename on their profiles...
Stacey Sullivan, Google’s Chief Cultural Officer, encourages ERGs [Employee Resource Groups], “It makes us more inclusive and it breaks down the walls and the disconnects that could happen in such a big organization.” I would argue it is not inclusivity but exclusivity that is propagated by such systems. ERGs erect walls based on age, gender, ethnicity, and tenure within the corporation itself. This is not unlike the logic behind Google+ that encourages us to define numerous micro-communities based on broad cultural schema or on much more subjective and judgmental formats. Who knows what constitutes these schemata? We don’t, because we don’t know what categories we are put in. This absence of transparency on Google+ makes it impossible to reflexively know the grounds for our Google+ relationships. Members of Google’s ERGs at least know where they stand. On Google+ we don’t know what the name of the Circle is that we are in and therefore don’t have the footing to understand the relationship–only that we were selected and going to receive a filtered form of personalized knowledge.Preferring public broadcasting to the 'insular banter of ideological tribes'.
(Sorry, I can't figure out how to Invite more people -- they seem to have turned that off, for now.)
posted by Jacqueline at 9:24 AM on June 30, 2011 [1 favorite]