I felt somewhat late to the plussing party as I was at ISTE 2011 when Google+ was launched on Tuesday. I got an early invite (Thanks, Marshall), but didn't even log in until my flight back to the west coast late Wednesday night (Thanks, in-air WiFi). (Sidenote: how bizarre that I feel like a late early adopter of G+ because I didn't check it out in the first 24 hours.) No doubt because I was headed back from a 22K educator event, my initial thoughts have been about how Google+ could work for teachers and students.
My first reaction: It has great potential. My worries: widespread adoption and Web filtering. You can read my RWW write-up here.
What I didn't really address in that piece were my trepidations about relocating my education-oriented and tech-oriented social networks elsewhere -- namely from Twitter to Google+. I follow hundreds of educators and techies on Twitter. I just rolled over my 5000th Twitter follower. Must I relocate that all to Google+?
Well, no. I needn't. New network means, well, new network. People will come to Google+ or they won't. I'll build a network there or I won't. I needn't replicate Twitter or Facebook or even my Gmail contacts list there. It's still early (it's still just a "field trial), and even though some of the louder voices in tech are full of high praise for the site, that doesn't mean it's going to necessarily be a hit.
But damn, I like it. I see how G+ could easily be a hit at last for a social effort from Google. It has offers a lot of things that I really like: a nice UI, granular controls for sharing, video chat, messaging, photos, and a notification system that, because I'm an avid user of Google's suite of tools (Gmail, Reader, Docs), is hard to ignore.
I'm intrigued by this new network, particularly in what it means in terms of sharing, and I'm already seeing some of the new and different ways -- as a family member, as a journalist, as an ed-techie, etc -- I'll be able to communicate by having a particular Circle as my interlocutors. Heck, I got my mom to join, as it's perfect for the sharing she already does via Picasa (She's not on Facebook).
It feels quite conversational on Google+ so far, but like I said, it's early. We haven't all hooked up auto-posting and moved along, continuing to push our updates primarily to Facebook and Twitter. And as it stands, I'd wager a good three-quarters of the posts on Google+ are about the service itself. (The rest is Sergey Brin's photos.)
Some random thoughts:
G+ versus Facebook. Facebook has already lost the battle for my time and interest. I rarely visit the site, and even less rarely share things there. I've tried to convince Facebook friends to check out Twitter, where up 'til the launch of Google+, I spent most of my social networking energies, but most of them have viewed Twitter with suspicion and hostility. And at this stage, I just don't feel like evangelizing Google+ (or Twitter, quite frankly. Don't get me started there) to that Facebook crowd. I've already moved my social efforts away from Facebook, with the knowledge that if I desperately need to know what's happening with the members of my high school graduating class, I know where I can find them.
Broadcasting: Sharing links is probably 85% of what I do on Twitter (most of it links to my writing), and I don't think -- for now -- that my behavior on Twitter will change. But I haven't decided yet what my broadcast strategy will be for Google+. I hated that sense with Buzz that everything there was simply an aggregation of things posted elsewhere. Will I post all my links to Google+? (I haven't so far.) Will I post them as public, or will I post them only to certain Circles? How will this targeted and limited method of sharing change how information is spread? (I ask that in terms of journalism and in terms of education.)
Sparks: So far, Sparks is the least fleshed out of Google+'s features. I haven't been terribly impressed with the content that it's uncovered for the few topics I've selected (education technology, e-books, libraries, and open source), but I haven't tried following the suggested topics like sports cars or recipes. Go figure. Sparks could be interesting (and ugh, that seems to be the gist of a lot of my review of G+ -- "the potential" -- ah, how it reminds me of my thoughts about Wave.)
Google Reader: And speaking of feeds, what will happen to Google Reader? Will I be able to easily share to Google+? I'd like that a lot, and I'd probably share that way before even Tweeting a link quite honestly. And again, I love the idea of being able to share with just certain folks (as those who follow me on Google Reader know, I share a lot of Star Wars stuff, something that I can now spare you from). Of course, Google Reader doesn't have so I'm curious to see how or if it's actually integrated into the G+ fold. [Insert "death of RSS" claim here]
+1 Button: I haven't added the +1 button to this blog and to Hack Education. I guess that's on the To-Do list now, even though I have serious button fatigue and even though I'm not clear where "plussing" will fit in -- as a social action or for social search.