Google+ - First Impressions

Google has started it's own social network called Google+. I've used it for two days now and here are my first impressions.

Firstly, it's NOT a Facebook killer.

On the face of it though it looks every bit like Facebook. You add friends, you share news and photos with your friends and you all live happily ever after. There are subtle differences though.

Let's take a look at the different features that Google+ is offering us.

• Circles are Google+'s take on Facebook friend lists. You add different friends to different lists. They start off with the default "Friends", "Family", "Acquaintances" and "Following", but you can easily add your own circles, maybe "Tech Geeks". I haven't quite figured out "Following", but it seems to mimic the Twitter definition of "following", mainly where you look at other people's posts, but you don't know them well enough to share things directly with them. Now this is reasonably close to Facebook's functionality of friend lists, but what makes circles better is the actual communication with your circles. When you share a link or a photo, you can easily select one or multiple circles to share this with.
  
• Sparks are basically simplified RSS feeds and it's an obvious play on the words 'sparking your interest'. You can select a featured spark (and I suspect the featured ones will change periodically) when you visit the Sparks page, or just add a new spark based on a keyword that you type. Google then brings back news items related to your keyword, which you can then share with circles.
• Hangouts are the odd one out for me. You can start a hangout any time you want. Starting a hangout basically tells friends in your circles that you are ready to chat via webcam. In Google's own words, this will have to do until they invent teleportation. Personally, I don't see myself using this feature at all, but maybe it's different for the Americans?

All of this is tightly integrated with other Google products. Google +1 can be used on almost any link, status update or post that your friends have shared and Gmail has gotten a bit of a Google+ revamp, with a notification bar at the top. I'm sure that as Google+ grows and develops, we'll see a lot more integration with other products too.

What does Google+ not have?

It doesn't have applications, games, birthday calendars, Family Trees or Farmville. Most of you must be baulking at the very idea of Facebook without these... features. For me those same features are major irritations. I try and use Facebook to update my friends and family about my comings and goings and sometimes I share a few photos.

Moving forwards, Google+ will be my social network of choice. Who knows, maybe, one day, not too far in the future, I can close my Facebook account, once and for all