Google has stumbled before when trying to launch new social networks – anyone remember Google Wave? Or Google Buzz?
Despite previous failures, I think Google+ offers a number of useful features that make it worth using. Over time, I can see Google+ growing to become a formidable rival to Facebook and Twitter. Here are three reasons I think it’s worth checking out Google+:
1. Great privacy settings: Google put privacy settings front and center with Google+. When you add new friends to the service, you are able to group them into “circles,” where you can then easily limit posts to just a specific circle (or to the entire Internet). This isn’t a totally new service – Facebook has a similar “Lists” feature – but Facebook lists are not nearly as easy to use or well done as Google+.
1. 2. Huddles: There’s a great feature built into the Google+ mobile app (out now for Android, coming soon to iOS) that lets you text a group of people at once. You can set these groups up on the fly, and can see when someone reads a message sent (a great way to make sure your messages are read). This would be great for any sort of event – or for a political campaign with staff spread out over a wide geographic area. Using Huddles would be a great way to cut down on one-line emails that clog up inboxes.
3. Hangouts
: Skype is expected to announce some sort of partnership with Facebook tomorrow – and they’ll need to, because this Google+ Hangouts feature will give them a run for their money. Hangouts is a video conferencing tool that runs inside Google+ and allows ten people to video conference with each other at a time – for free. I tried it yesterday night for the first time and the video quality is better than iChat (on the Mac) and the audio quality was crystal clear. When multiple people are trying to speak at a time, Hangouts will automatically show whoever is speaking loudest. You can invite specific people to a Hangout or can invite an entire Circle of friends. Pretty cool stuff. (Newt Gingrich might be the first political figure to use this tool in campaigning. While I’m not a fan of Newt, I’m looking forward to see how this works for him).What do you think of Google+? I’d love to know. Either add me on Google+ here – or let me know in the comments below. Have you tried Google+ yet?