Stay away.
After just shy of a month of screwing with it, I can definitely say that it is one of the worst experiences I’ve had on the internet.
There are a lot of inherent problems with it. Even the ‘features’ that people seem to be flocking to it for are fundamentally broken, and the entire underlying foundation holds zero respect for privacy.
Part of the problem lies in what people consider ‘privacy.’ Most people seem to think of it as a one-way street, in which they only share information with certain people, with those outside their circle left out. Privacy goes both ways, though, in that it also keeps you from being bombarded with information from people you don’t know or have no interest in hearing from. Google+ doesn’t understand this, and, by extension, does not understand social networking in the slightest.
Circles are how they seem to be selling their particular brand of pseudo-privacy. You add people to ‘circles,’ and you only share things with the circles you want to hear you. This is in contrast to Facebook, which offers ‘groups’ in which you can choose to exclude from your otherwise universal posts. However, rather than enter into a mutual relationship the way Facebook does, G+ is more passive, allowing anyone to ‘follow’ you by putting you into one of their circles – much in the way Twitter works.
The problem here is that Twitter and Facebook are fundamentally very different. Facebook is about who you know, and Twitter is more about what you say. By this I mean that Facebook’s function is to keep people connected — their entire culture revolves around this, via ‘friends’ and ‘likes’. Twitter, on the other hand, is a bit more passive, in that you offer up short blurbs of something you have to say on a topic, and anyone who wants to listen can opt-in. Inversely, you follow people you find interesting to see what they may have to say. The amount of personal information shared is exceedingly minimal by design, which facilitates a sense of freedom in what many people choose to share.
G+ fits in the middle. It establishes relationships on both a personal and impersonal level; you can have friends & family there, as well as follow or be followed by whoever in the same way Twitter does. Where it flops is that when someone follows you, it basically hands them a bullhorn and lets them begin shouting what they have to say at you whether you’re interested or not. Worse is that, since it’s a shiny new toy, most people are just talking about Google+ and how great it is without actually really using it in the intended way. As a result, tech-nerds think it’s theirs, and they whine and bitch a lot about how Google should make it what they want to keep non-nerds out. Well, mission accomplished. You’ve killed it before it had a chance to take off.
Google+ will most likely be shut down sometime before 2013, just in time to be replaced by the next short-term Google failure. Seriously, even the Ballmer-lead Microsoft isn’t this irresponsible. Ballmer, of course, is a coked-up frat boy.
