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Anyone actively using Google+ ? 
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I've used it more than I ever did Facebook, before I deleted my account. But my live is just too busy for me to post much, I probably look at Google+ once or twice a month, which is about twice as often as I looked at Facebook.

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Fri Oct 07, 2011 9:56 am
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I think part of the problem is many people are already embedded in a Facebook world. As I'd killed my FB account earlier this year, I had no ties. My FB account had no family in it, and I'd limited it to just friends and "friends of friends", but I never really fitted in as it were.

The constant worry over security, arbitrary changes to the settings from FB itself, and the general clutter and noise, eventually pushed me away. You also have to remember that for all these networking sites, you are just advertising fodder. I still have a Diaspora account, but that's been dead a long time - nice idea, no traction.

For my social networking I don't want games, I don't want to continually have to block invitations from folk playing games, and I don't want to know about their drunken antics. Also, the way FB has been latched onto by big businesses ("like" us on Facebook everywhere) meant for me it had jumped the shark.

I like G+ at the moment. Yes, much of the above still applies, but I have more control over my data. In fact, I can download all my data and quit my account if I wish. I can mute posts, rather than whole users, and the whole circles thing means I can concentrate on one aspect of my stream to the exclusion of others. It works far better for me FB ever did.

A host of "celebs" have also joined in. I follow Robert Llewellyn - Kryten, Scrapheap Challenge - and he actually replies to comments to his posts. It's like a much larger Twitter.

Oh, and for a photographer, Google+ albums render uploaded images way better than the mush Facebook provides. I know they've improved things, but photographers have clambered aboard the G+ bandwagon in their droves. If you're into photography, it's the place to be as far as I can see! :mrgreen:

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Fri Oct 07, 2011 9:59 am
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okenobi wrote:
Call me an idiot, but I trust Sas more than I trust any multinational corporation. Especially those who's express purpose is to make a living from people's casual relationship with their personal data.


Indeed, as do I. My point is that this is the Internet, we don't really know who Sas is apart from what we see on this forums and what we think we see on a few social networking sites. For all we know he could be a large multinational corporation! But I'm sure he isn't!

okenobi wrote:
Both Google and Facebook (amongst others) are an intelligence agency's/stalker's paradise. Call me Bratty, but that's just how it is. I already use a separate browser solely for Facebook because of the completely bastardly way they data mine. However, the problem is if I were to remember my anti-surveillance, privacy-craving, civil liberty-loving tendencies every time I went onto the site, I'd never post ANYTHING.


Aye, I think you can probably trust Google as much as Facebook.

okenobi wrote:
And what's the point of being on a social site, if you're not going to share. The things I share should be for the people I want to see them and ONLY THEM. How hard is that?


G+ allows you to govern this better, however, as ever Google can see all (as can Facebook, Diaspora (presumably if they wanted to?), Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, etc.)

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</snip>

+1


Fri Oct 07, 2011 10:22 am
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That's precisely why Diaspora has the superior concept. Because all the data can be hosted independently of the service in a "pod". Therefore, Diaspora can't actually see it. And each user chooses who sees what. Takes Circles and pisses all over it.


Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:32 pm
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G+ has been a big serve of meh for me. I just don't see the point in it - which may say more about me than it.

I guess as an alternative to Facebook it's great, but if you're already using FB I just can't see the added advantages of using "yet another social network". I'm not really "active" on FB, I'm more of a lurker: seeing what my friends are up to, seeing pictures of their holidays/kids/giraffes/etc, and getting updates from various magazines/restaurants/artists I've "liked". I post the occasional pic or link to a new blog post or Flickr album and that's about it.

And I don't really care what FB do with that limited info they get from me, but I'm damned if Google are getting any more. I'm actually contemplating Googlecide and deleting my gmail and finding a new search engine. Although I rarely use Google now to search as its results are increasingly crap - Wikipedia is much better.

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Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:50 pm
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okenobi wrote:
Because all the data can be hosted independently of the service in a "pod".


Yes, but currently most people reside on the main Diaspora pod. To host your own will probably cost you around £14/month*, which doesn't sound a lot, until you realise you're spending ~£160/year on social networking...

So while you do have the option, it's unlikely many people will use it, I think.

*most ISPs won't allow you to host a web server off your home line, and even if you ignore that you'll have crap upload speeds...


Fri Oct 07, 2011 5:10 pm
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jasonline wrote:
G+ has been a big serve of meh for me. I just don't see the point in it - which may say more about me than it.

+1

In fact I've just deleted the app from my phone as it only serves to annoy me when I get another notification from something I never use.

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Tue Oct 11, 2011 10:50 am
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I know about five people who have ditched Facebook for G+, plus myself. It'll be interesting to see how friends react, will they straddle both sites, or will they drop friends? Bearing in mind some friends on Facebook I rarely see in the flesh.


Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:09 am
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okenobi wrote:
Call me an idiot...


OK, you're an idiot! :lol:

Sorry, couldn't resist. Or, as Mark might say, I could have resisted but chose not to. :P

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Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:22 am
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forquare1 wrote:
I know about five people who have ditched Facebook for G+, plus myself. It'll be interesting to see how friends react, will they straddle both sites, or will they drop friends? Bearing in mind some friends on Facebook I rarely see in the flesh.

I tend to only really interact (if that's the right word?) with actual real-world friends on FB. (i.e. arranging nights out, sharing photos, etc...)

Most other people I know are on twitter and it allows me to keep track of what everyone's doing.

I don't need G+ also as there is no gap to be filled by it.

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Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:28 am
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Fogmeister wrote:
forquare1 wrote:
I know about five people who have ditched Facebook for G+, plus myself. It'll be interesting to see how friends react, will they straddle both sites, or will they drop friends? Bearing in mind some friends on Facebook I rarely see in the flesh.

I tend to only really interact (if that's the right word?) with actual real-world friends on FB. (i.e. arranging nights out, sharing photos, etc...)

Most other people I know are on twitter and it allows me to keep track of what everyone's doing.

I don't need G+ also as there is no gap to be filled by it.


I kind of feel the same. I expect FaceBook, Twitter and Google all expect you to use their services exclusively. However, peer pressure forces you to use more than one, and in my mind that creates a fragmentation of where things should be. Right now, Twitter is the central base for me. Any status updates etc. start there. FaceBook generally gets checked because of family presence. Some of those just won’t shift to Google+ whatever the persuasion.

I look at Google+ every so often, but why do I need to replicate these tasks over more than one site? Personally, I’d like some form of aggregating software (preferably on the iPad) that gathered all the stuff together in one place and showed it to me. Socialite does Twitter and Facebook, but not Google+ yet. Or Posterous, which is another happening place it seems (and which I do use).

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Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:17 pm
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Facebook for Google+™ allows you to see your Facebook stream inside Google+.
Simply Connect to Facebook, and get all the updates on your Google+ Facebook tab.


Chrome extension found here


Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:52 pm
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The main thing I like is the simplicity and intuitiveness. Facebook used to confuse the hell out of me sometimes.
forquare1 wrote:
I know about five people who have ditched Facebook for G+, plus myself. It'll be interesting to see how friends react, will they straddle both sites, or will they drop friends? Bearing in mind some friends on Facebook I rarely see in the flesh.

I dropped Facebook before G+ came along.

Already most of the people who ever said anything on Facebook I might have been interested in are already in my circles.

Most of the people I care about who don't post on G+ have never posted on Facebook either.

I do find it rather interesting though, that many of my friends choose to post on various forums all over the place. Each forum serves a different porpoise. They could probably be equally served by circles on G+ or groups on Facebook or any of the other clubs you get on various social sites, but some people just seem to prefer forums.

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Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:23 am
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Now that iCloud is out I'm beginning the process of moving over to my @me.com email address.

It integrates a hell of a lot better (obviously) with the iPhone and my Mac.

Just need to send out an email to the correct people letting them know.

Also, I'm choosing wisely which companies I update with my new email address.

I will always have the gmail one there anyway so it's not too much of a big deal.

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Thu Oct 13, 2011 1:32 pm
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[Google Engineer Calls Google+ a Pathetic Afterthought


Interesting read: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876

Too long to reproduce in it's entirety, so here's a choice cut:

Quote:
Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don't get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: "So is it the Stalker API?" She got all glum and said "Yeah." I mean, I was joking, but no... the only API call we offer is to get someone's stream. So I guess the joke was on me.
Microsoft has known about the Dogfood rule for at least twenty years. It's been part of their culture for a whole generation now. You don't eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food. Doing that is simply robbing your long-term platform value for short-term successes. Platforms are all about long-term thinking.
Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone.
Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: "Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let's go contract someone to, um, write some games for us." Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.
You can't do that. Not really. Not reliably. There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. We don't have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, but we don't.

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Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:49 pm
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