Google+ Gets a Check+ Part 1

The Fourth of July holiday weekend was ruined for most of us by the launch of Google+. In just 4 days the new social platform by Google has exploded. Of course many have still not seen it as it is in real beta (as opposed to Gmail’s multi-year beta status) and the company was so overwhelmed with invitation requests that they’ve had to bottleneck entrance to the system.

WTF?!

Google+ was launched on June 28 following a little over a week in which slight changes to Google were spotted. It is essentially a status/content wall similar to Facebook’s that aggregates Google+ content from people you’re connected to in Google apps, Gmail, etc. You can visit the home page to request an invite and I think they’re giving priority to those who request an invite that have already been added by multiple people already using Google+. That would seem to be the case considering how many of my social media colleagues are signed up but few non-industry friends are. It would make sense from a marketing standpoint as we’re all early adopters and influencers to some degree.

Functionality

Keep in mind that this is beta and some nice folks from Google have already told us they’re taking feedback and making changes rapidly as we go.

The Navigation Bar
The first thing you’ll notice is that the new Google bar that you’ve been seeing now begins with +Michael. You can still reach your Gmail, docs, etc, but the +Username will take you to Google+. The right side of the bar gives you an account dropdown with an alert box that turns red when you have a notice. The Share field allows you to post a quick note (like a Tweet or status update), followed by more in-depth settings. It’s an efficient and compact design. It reminds me of something.

Stream
The Stream is similar to Facebook with far more control and is your main Google+ UI much like your FB Wall. You can view your stream with all of your contacts or, with a simple click, see only content from the Circle, or group, you want. More on Circles in a moment. You essentially get the same functionality with your stream as with Facebook Groups or Twitter Lists but with a far superior user experience.

Email
A quick word about Google+ and it’s effect on your email: Once you sign up for Google+ go into the settings quickly and change what you wish to receive alerts on. Every comment in your stream will send an alert to your email. So, unless you want your Gmail account to blow up, make this change soon.

Circles
Google+ allows you control over your contacts like never before. With Facebook you get a few settings that give you the ability to lump contacts into one of a very few categories with no overlap. The problem with this is that human relationships and communications are much more complicated. I’ve written and spoken in depth about this, theorizing that the next big social network would take more realistic human relationship dynamics into account, even going so far as to begin building out the concept behind a possible startup. The fact is that Facebook’s founder and many of it’s young programmers don’t have the depth of experience with human relationships that us old folks have, especially those with some background in psychology, sociology, or mental health.

Circles allow you to create custom groups and organize your contacts into them. Not only can you put a contact into a group, you can out them into multiple groups, say, co-workers AND colleagues, or client AND friends. Once a contact is in this group you can control what content they see and don’t see. I’ve attempted to load 100+ into a circle at once and the platform froze. I haven’t figured out the exact limit but more than 20-30 at once is fine.

 

Simply drag a user into a Circle to add them, the number in the Circle will change. You can drag a user to the gray Circle to create a new one, or just click on it.

You can click on a Circle to open it to add members this way, remove members or rename the group or description.

You can sort users of a single Circle by first name, last name or relevance.

Make sure you’ve updated your Google profile with an avatar or you look like one of these faceless gray icons.

Profile
Your Google+ profile simply pulls content from your existing Google profile. If you’ve been too busy with Twitter and LinkedIn, you might want to go back and clean up your Google profile. You don’t want to be one of the graphic heads as seen above! Your G+ (I”m getting sick of typing Google+) profile has several sections:

Posts – what you’ve posted.

About – this is your Google profile content as Introduction with fields for Bragging Rights, Occupation, Employment.

Photos – you can create albums here just like in Facebook. It automatically creates an album for all photos from your posts. I haven’t tested the file limit yet but will soon.

#1′s – this are posts that you’ve #1′d or Liked, or whatever we’re calling it.

Buzz – this is essentially everyone that you follow or that follows you.

You will see a smattering of people you’ve put in Circles, and those that have added you. On the right you can add as many links as you want, the major ones like Facebook and Twitter come with icons.

 

As delve deeper I’ll show you more of the UI and functionality behind Google+. Stay tuned!