6 months of Google+

As 2011 draws to an end, let me do a re-cap of my favorite product out of Mountain View this year.  (To follow me on Google+, go here.)

June 30, 2011

Checked into Twitter one evening on June 30th to find out that a bunch of people who I typically communicate with were getting invites to Google+ so I of course begged and groveled for my way in! :) When I was finally able to log in, I actually had notifications from 6 other people, from various sources, who had also invited me. I felt well loved!

 

The first month

…was a lot of meta chatter about what Google+ was and how to use it. As new features got added and bugs got ironed out, it became clear that I really, really, *really* liked G+ even in its “field test” form. Completely forgot about Twitter and started posting most of my content there. Some people like Kevin Rose have even redirected their personal domain names (kevinrose.com) and quit blogging to post primarily to Google+.

Why?

1) Medium- to long-form post size:
Not being restricted to 140 characters was like being able to speak again after having a stroke that caused a speech impediment. Freedom to write full paragraphs! Ability to make persuasive arguments! I could write substance instead of trying to be a witty sound bite!

2) Medium- to long-form comment size and single-thread comments:
Comments and conversations suddenly became more intelligent. I cannot count the number of times I stopped pursuing a conversation on Twitter because it was taking too long to even understand what that person was trying to say in 140 characters.

And having all related comments in once place meant that conversations could sprout up between other people around the same G+ post. In fact, I’ve noticed that posts with at least one kickstarter comment can make or break the “success” of a lively G+ discussion. (Psychologically this would be akin to seeing a line up – there must be something worthwhile to line up for!)

3) Ability to edit my posts and comments:
My grammar and spelling have spiraled sharply into a dark void since I stopped regularly blogging years ago. Editing posts after hitting the Submit button was a godsend.

4) “Instant Upload” for photos with the Android app:
I take a picture on my phone. Photo gets auto-magically synced to the Google Picasa cloud. I share photo with friends. Easy!

5) Easy to find and connect with like-minded or interesting people:
Look at a profile of someone you don’t know on Twitter and then look at their Google Profile. Notice how easy it is to figure out who that person is, what they like, and what they post about on Google+. Especially useful because if you saw someone post a good comment on any G+ post, you can find out if they are worthwhile to follow or “circle”.

6) Circles:
More about it below…

 

G+ Circles

I’m not completely happy with the current implementation of Circles in Google+. In fact, sometimes I think  it’s very very broken. We should be able to post to a public circle and have people subscribe to it but, alas, this feature has not happened yet. I lamented about it here.

But in my early days when my circles were manageable, it was nice to be able to target posts to certain groups of people based on topic or relevancy. I even organized my circles into reading and sharing circles.

So G+ pro-tip: If you’re going to even bother with organizing people into circles, MAKE SURE YOU GROUP YOUR CIRCLES INTO TWO BUCKET TYPES: (1) READING AND (2) SHARING! You can thank me later.

So while circles don’t work as advertised for me, they offer some very big advantages…

 

Circle Advantage #1 (Or: How I went from 500 followers to 4000 in a single week!)

At the end of Sept, Google released a feature to share circles. Example: If you have a circle full of Android Developers, you can curate them into a circle and share them as a package group for others to follow. With one click, someone could instantly get a lot of new, interesting content to read.

Unexpectedly (or as expected?), shared circles can get very popular. In the first month of being a G+ user, there was a lot of discussion about the men to women ratio. The numbers being thrown around were 9:1. I called out Silicon Valley blogger Louis Gray on it, had a short conversation about it, and then ended up in his circles. Months later, Louis eventually joined the Google+ team as an employee and I suddenly found myself in a Women in Tech circle that initially was shared by Louis Gray, then Revision3’s Veronica Belmont, and The Guild’s Felicia Day – which got re-shared and re-broadcasted out to thousands of people within a span of a few days.

Wow.

 

Google+ Ripples (Or: On the Network Effect of Felicia Day)

Felicia Day – you might know her from The Guild; I know her more for Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – has an insane following on Google+ BTW; Over 600,000 people, in fact.

So this network effect illustrates something very cool that happened when Google+ released the “Ripples” feature in late Oct. Keyan Mobli (who works on the Cyanogen ROM for Android) made a fairly innocuous post of “Hey, reshare this post so we can try out Ripples!”. Said post reached 10,000 (the max #) re-shares in about 24 hours.

I would post to the interactive Ripple but it looks like it’s too old to work so here’s a screengrab from a post from Denis Labelle on what the Ripple graph ended up looking like at the end. Keyan Mobli also wrote a post-Ripple summary post.

LockerGnome’s Chris Pirillo had a pretty good ripple going on  (upper right hand) but amazingly Felicia Day re-shared my re-share, which caused a little big petri dish of re-shares to spawn (bottom right hand corner). It was quite fun to watch it spread.

(And can I just say that I’m constantly surprised that anyone has me in their circles, much less Felicia Day!)

So while you might not get a crazy Ripple like this for every single one of your posts, if you’re a brand manager and someone who’s just concerned about writing good content, don’t ignore Ripples!

 

Networking on G+

So the best part of Google+ is that Google+ is made up of people.

Cool features aside, it’s a platform to meet like-minded individuals. So while your best friend or your hockey buddies might not be on G+, or even half of your Twitter list, there are so many interesting people out there who post interesting (medium- to long-form) content. I personally know that the Android dev and photography communities have really flourished on Google+.

If you actively seek out these people online, you might be surprised at the new things you’ll learn and the increased interaction engagement that will return back to you.

A lot of people I follow on Twitter now are people I met in real life then wanted to keep in touch with. On G+, I’m conversing with some people who I hope to one day cross paths with.

 

Other G+ Highlights

» Google+ inspired me to share something robot-related every day for more than a month. I can’t keep up with a daily post anymore (partially time, partially lack of content) but you can find them all with the hashtag #DailyRobot.

» Google+’s photo sharing ability and Matt Cutt’s 30-day Challenge inspired me to make a bento box lunch every day so I would stop buying my lunches.

» Google+ Games inspired me to write my first ever Google Chrome Extension that I still use to this day. (It desperately needs an update but soon… soon, I will.)

» Google+ Games brought out the competitive geek in John Hostile who wrote an automated script to beat my (and other Googlers) score in Angry Birds. John has since become my G+ ally. :)

» Google Takeout means that what I post doesn’t get lost in the dark corners of the internet.

 

In closing

Google+ is not for everyone but trust me when I say that it will creep up behind you. When the media pundits tell you that Google+ is dead, know that there’s millions of us Plussers laughing at the idea of such a lively platform going away any time soon.

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