Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Google+ and social media overload

I check Facebook news feed daily now.  Yes, it's a security pitfall (even if you lock it down), yes, they don't appear to care about MY content or MY privacy, but it's a calculated risk on my part -- I get a lot from it, so it's worth it.  It is there that I've found long lost friends, remembered how funny and interesting they are, and would miss not hearing about their daily travails.  So OK, I drank the Kool-aid.

Now comes Google+, appealing to all of us geeks, telling us they'll protect our privacy, that they respect our content, that they'll give us all the things we lamented about Facebook, if only we'll shift over. I'm curious, so I signed up.  Only they're not really ready yet -- they're not letting me in -- their pilot is oversubscribed or some such annoyance. A friend of mine (who made it in early) claims it's great, that he's already got 70+ connections on it in less than 3 days, which represents roughly 33% of his Facebook Friend entourage.  He feels that 33% in 3 days is a pretty good indicator that eventually he'll get most of the folks he's interested in.  I don't know. . .

It's taken some folks a long time just to make it to Facebook for a once-a-month check-in.  I don't see those folks being persuaded to check something ELSE.  For the folks who do check in more regularly, they've already done the work of finding and connecting with friends--why should they do it all twice?  For the folks who have exercised every security option Facebook offers, why would they want to get in on the ground floor of something likely to have just as many growing-pains security concerns as any other online community?  For the folks who simply like Google and their innocent, childlike primary colors, are you SURE?  I applaud their standing up to China in the face of its obvious state-sponsored hacking activities, but Google will not save us if it's not profitable. This is not Mr. Rogers' Google.

So yeah, I'll try it out and I'll keep an open mind.  I am a geek after all.  But I will also be looking for a lot of answers.  I'm not investing in "+" if it doesn't deliver.

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1 Comments:

At 2:45 PM , Blogger Collabosaurus Rex said...

Interestingly, RogueDarkJedi posts his advice on the Facebook stream in Google+: "DO NOT INSTALL THIS". Read more here http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ikymu

 

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