Why you won't hate Google+ and some tips to get started
Jason Hiner | July 1, 2011 There's one big reason why I don't think you're going to hate Google Plus: It's really easy to find and add friends. Social networks are all about who you're connected to. That's one of the things that still holds back Twitter sometimes. It's just not that easy to find the good people to follow and it can take a lot of time to hone and prune your list. Facebook is a little easier, especially because you can friend someone, but mute them from your feed.
Google+ is now the easiest of all to find and add friends (and like Facebook there are muting options). On Google+, everywhere you see a user's name or photo you can mouse over it, click "Add to Circles" and then select which group of your friends you'd like to add them to (or create a new Circle). It's quick and painless. In just over 48 hours and maybe a total of an hour of intermittant usage I've been able to find over 150 of my tech and media industry friends. That's high social.
There are other things to like about Google+ (the ability to control your data and privacy) and things to dislike (you can't edit the title and description of linked stories you're posting, for example), but I'll get into that stuff more in the future.
For now, Google+ is still a closed beta and it's mostly filled with techies, journalists, and social media enthusiasts, as Robert Scoble explained earlier today. But, the early returns look pretty good, and as far as Google betas go, this one is nearly fully baked. In other words, I don't think it will be long before it's more widely available.
For those who are already in or will be soon, there have been some great tips for getting started that have already been posted on Google+ itself. Here's a quick selection of the best tips.
Gaurav Mathur posted this quick intro:
Welcome to Google Plus, newcomers.* +1 is the same thing as Like* You can tag people in posts just like Facebook* Someone adding you to a circle does NOT mean you've added them.* When you post something, you control which circles see it.* Download the Google+ app, and use huddle* If you've got a good internet connection, try using the hangout feature.
- You can click on profile pictures to rotate through them.- In the stream, you can click 'j' to navigate down to the next item or 'k' to navigate up. I think it's the same keys that Gmail uses, which is probably in turn because +Paul Buchheit uses vi and created Gmail. :)- If you're sharing a post with a small circle of people, you can prevent resharing. Click the arrow at the top-right of the post and choose "Disable reshare."- One more: if you're looking for more fun things in your stream, the "Incoming" stream is stuff from people who are sharing with you, but who you haven't added to a circle.
A couple of people have started to come across the problem of being followed by way more people than they can possibly cope with following back, and their stream becomes insanely noisy. I've found a pretty simple strategy seems to fix the problem:- Create circles for groups of people that match groups in your real life; e.g., old friends, co-workers, etc. Put people you actually know into these, and feel free to put people in multiple circles. That way, you can share with just these groups, and you can also view the streams for just these groups when you want to hang out (or Hangout) with just them.- Create circles for groups of people that you want to follow, even if you don't know them. e.g., tech bloggers, public figures. Good sources of reading material, even though you'll probably never share anything with these circles.- And if you get a bunch of followers who you don't know, that's OK; you don't have to add them to your own circles. That way, they can see things which you post publicly, but your own stream doesn't get flooded. If you want to see what they're saying, you can browse your Incoming stream, and occasionally spot interesting people to follow or respond to. (This continues to scale well even when you have a Really Huge number of followers, and lets you occasionally keep in touch with people even if you don't want to be doing that every single time you log on to Google+)
1. On Facebook go to Account, Account Settings, Download Your Information. Wait for that process, and you will receive a email notification when the download is ready.2. Download.3. Take the photos from the zip file that is downloaded and put them in your My Pictures folder. 4. Download Picasa 3.8 (I wouldn't be surprised if that number doesn't change to 4 shortly)5. Allow it to scan you docs folders for photos.6. Click upload on any folder and login to google.7. Voila... they are on your Google+, you may need to change the privacy setting of the album so people can view.
Reader Comments (11)
After this I WILL be trying Google+ as soon as I can get my hands on it. Thanks for the info!
I can't wait to try it! I love the "circle" idea. Facebook has the "group" concept and it works quite well. But I like how the "circle" seems to prevent comment flooding.
so how do we get it?
This is just what the world has been waiting for! If Google can keep the UI simple to navigate and the functionality easy to use I think they will be on to a winner. Weaning people off Facebook will be a bit tricky as many people are now heavily committed to Facebook - who knows what the future holds though. Can't wait for my invitation to come through
I am probably one of seven people in the world that never signed up for a facebook account so I'm looking forward to Google+ .
Google are on to something really good if they manage to pull this off and keep it minimal
i am looking forward to joining this becuase it has a lot of promising things that i would like to be part of
GARGLE GARGLE
Ok. I'm in. How does this blow the big monster FB out of the water?
Google+ sounds like a it will be the perfect social network but after all of Google's other failed attempts who knows. To those of us who "fish out" the best of the web this might be a 30 pounder or just a snag but either way they've started to reel in the media and hook onto everyone's hope of a perfect social network, lets just hope this isn't another fish out of water like Google Wave and all the other failed attempts .
@Randall - I'm also in the seven, wonder who the other 5 are?
@Randall & Niall - I'm also somewhere in the seven. That leaves 4. Although I can easily think of more than four people I know (and they're quite tech savvy) that have never bothered signing up on Facebook either.