After using only Google’s new social network for a week — forsaking all others — here’s what I learned
Computerworld – On July 8, I went on the Google+ Diet, using Google’s new social network for all my online communication. As part of the diet, I stopped using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and several other services. I even stopped using e-mail.
Microsoft MCTS Certification, MCITP Certification and over 2000+ Exams at Actualkey.com
But the most addictive component of Google+ is something called Notifications. By clicking on the glaring red box that tells how many notifications you have waiting, you can see at a glance who Circled, or followed, you, who commented, +1’d (or “liked”) your posts or comments, and who reshared one of your posts.
Dangerously, Google+ becomes more addictive the more you use it. Simply understanding how Circles and following works enables you to constantly tweak and optimize what you see and who you interact with.
Gmail is an inseparable part of Google+
For my Google+ Diet, I’ve redirected all my e-mail communication through Google+. When I send e-mail, I simply post on Google+, and “address” the post to someone’s Google+ presence or to their e-mail address. One advantage of this is that the subsequent back-and-forth takes place on Google+’s wonderful commenting system.
Google Plus
* Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet
* Visual tour: 8 Google+ add-ons, extensions, and downloads
* With 10M users, Google+ is becoming a social competitor
* Google races to create business version of Google+
* Privacy, contact updates added to Google+
* Can Facebook and Google+ coexist?
* Google+ fervor may be making Facebook nervous
* Google to developers: Stay tuned for Google+ tools
* Google+ hit with spam bug
* Visual tour: 10 Google+ tips for beginners
Continuing coverage: Google+
When I receive e-mail I want to reply to, I paste it into Google+ and reply from there.
I also use e-mail still for non-communication purposes, such as reading my Google Alerts and Calendar notifications, and for submitting columns.
As you may have now suspected, avoiding e-mail is somewhat idiotic, for two reasons. First, the copying and pasting of incoming e-mail into Google+ isn’t easier than simply replying. And secondly, Gmail is, in fact, part of Google+. Gmail serves as its messaging system.
For most people wanting to try the Google+ Diet, my advice is to go ahead and use Gmail with it.
Google+ replaces Twitter easier than it replaces Facebook
The transition from Twitter to Google+ is way easier than from Facebook to Google+. The reason is that Google+ does almost everything Twitter does, but better. On Facebook, however the biggest “feature” is the user base. So if you’re having daily conversations with your old college buddies or high school BFFs, those just stop when you move to Google+. For now, at least.
While Google+ represents a minor potential — and eventual — challenge to Facebook’s long-term dominance, it represents an existential threat to Twitter. As I said in my column last week, Twitter is obsolete. It’s great at delivering a quick comment or link, but if you want to chat about it, Twitter is lousy.
Google+ can replace blogging
Big-name bloggers have already shut down their blogs and replaced them with their public posts on their Google+ profiles. Here’s mine. As you can see, it’s a blog!
Better still, it works like the best blogging platform, Tumblr. It’s easy for other users to re-blog or “share” your posts on their own “blog.” Commenting is great.
The only downsides are that you can’t customize it with a “theme” or custom design, and you can’t use advertising. But it’s only a matter of time before these features come to Google+, I would imagine.