Will you Google + ?

  If you read news online you have probably heard about Google +.  The simple explanation of Google + is that it’s like Facebook 2.0, it’s Google’s social networking platform.  Notice I said platform?  It has several applications and a promise of more to come.

It is interesting to see what happens.  Facebook is so completely dominant in the social networking world, you wonder what it would take to give them some real competition.  Google has a lot of good things going for it, but social networking isn’t one of them.  Remember Buzz?  How about Wave?  No?  My point exactly.

You would think that most people in this country interested in using a social networking service are already doing so.  Of course there are babies being born everyday so there are new users but I think the real meat of the market are the people using sites like Facebook today.  So the $64 question is;

Will people with Facebook account use Google+?  Will they abandon Facebook for Google?  Will they maintain 2 sites?  Are they already burned out on friends, invites and status updates so + won’t even get a 2nd look?

You can’t get a + account right now, they are in a beta phase and have been overwhelmed with requests for new accounts but you can be notified when they are ready for you.  Granted, it won’t be a lot of use or fun if none of your friends are on it so waiting a little while may be a good choice.

I am one of the 16 people in this country who does not have a Facebook account.  At first it just wasn’t interesting enough for me, i didn’t go for the “I’m eating lunch” kind of posts.  I preferred the blog version of self expression.  As Facebook got tremendously popular I took a closer look.  I decided I had a few real issues with their strategy, the walling off of content (can’t be searched by outside search engines), the “owning” of your content and information and just the overall strategy of “I’m going to get you to tell me as much as you can so I can use/sell that data whether you like it or not” kinda thing.  I don’t try to discourage people from using Facebook, it’s just why I don’t use it.

For whatever reason, I don’t get the same vibe from Google.  They have been good to me so far.  Because of this, and my insatiable need to check out new stuff, I  will give + a try.  If you end up doing the same, maybe we can hang out sometime.

If you click on the picture you will go to the demo site, click on the little + at the end of the arrows to see some videos talking about the features.