Google Plus

[ffutures]

I won't be joining Google Plus - I tried it very briefly, realised just how much of my personal information they wanted for the account - nothing is optional including birthdays etc. - and that they wanted to use my most frequent gmail contacts as the core of my circle, or whatever it is they call it.

On the whole I don't think I want to go there - I prefer to leave email and social networking completely separate.

Comments

[inamac.livejournal.com]

One reason that I don't have a gmail account (apart from the one set up years ago for the cat club) is that they insisted on having a personal phone number through which to contact me - I never could work out why.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That may be if you've used Google's money transfer system to pay for things - I've done it a couple of times, I've since deleted my details.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

It seems so far to more or less be facebook, without the most irritating features of facebook.

I think I still hugely prefer LJ.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I never used facebook.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

You're missing nothing. It's a rather sad place, lots of people who I used to talk to regularly here on LJ, who were interesting, and made interesting posts, moved over to facebook, and since then... it's remarkable how little of interest they ever post. It's all just, look at me amn't I awesome here is my cat/baby/self, type stuff.

... I'm not a fan.

[heygirlie.livejournal.com]

There's a roundup post here (http://emmagrant01.livejournal.com/494921.html) of how much Google+ is failing before it even properly launches.

I'm waiting for Altly, myself.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm reasonably happy with Livejournal, to be honest.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Remember, blogging is for old people...

Just like Email.

(both things some of my medical students tell me)

::B::

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

For personal info, only name and sex are required, and I'm Other for the latter. You could lie.

LJ is better, I just hope all the FB people move to G+

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

"I just hope all the FB people move to G+"

Yes, please.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You do not have to put any "real" information in, aside from a functional e-mail address (which you can setup on Gmail without any real information), to setup a Google+ account. It does ASK, but it isn't a requirement: I have gotten by without it. Unlike Facebook, it doesn't ask you for your e-mail address and password when you sign up (and I still marvel that people would give them that info), but it does ask you to share contacts (which I didn't do).

The only time I've seen Google insist on a real phone number is for Google Voice, which gives you a real phone number. Other than that, I haven't seen any kind of enforcement of reality. OTOH, Facebook's attempts at enforcement are lame (and dictionary based), so they're not really much of a deterrent either.

However, if you've managed to avoid Facebook, you can pretty safely avoid Google+ too. Google+'s good features are mostly a response to Facebook's flaws, from what I've been able to see so far. Maybe I'm just old, but I've never been able to wrap my brain around Facebook's interface, but I find Google+ easy to use.

We'll be testing one of the features (Hangouts) more extensively tomorrow to see if it is useful for video-chat gaming. We've done a bunch of video chat gaming so far (using Skype, iChat, and Google), but Hangouts looks like it has some features that'll make it work better. I did have similar high hopes for Wave, but that really was like a bunch of people shouting in a room at the same time.

Hangouts also has the possibility of allowing you to schedule pickup games and cast a pretty wide net (of people you at least peripherally know) for participants. That's something I'll try after the convention season is over.

I have to try these things out because of my consulting business, and I can safely say that Google+ is much, much better than Facebook, but it does have some of the same conceptual limitations. It is for pointing at things, not hosting actual content.

It does have some interesting potential for contact management. Your Circles are essentially one-way valves: you put people in Circles, but they don't know how they're classified. You can post something to a Circle, and it gives you the option to e-mail folks without Google+, so if you're trying to send something to a group of vendors it is better than a mailing list: they can't post to the circle, so you don't have to worry about list backwash (or them seeing who else you sent it too).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting but not something I need.

[kayshapero]

Near as I can tell people generally lie about most of that stuff on Facebook, too.

Fact is, to Facebook and its relatives we aren't really the customers, we're the product. The customers are the advertisers. So of course they try to pry out lots of useful info for them.

I've got LJ, I've got a FB account and I don't want any other stuff. I put things I want to KEEP available on my own website anyway. Which is easy to find, long as you spell my name right. Spell it wrong and you'll get a stack of bogus hits.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think that sums it up pretty well. Really nothing I need in facebook, so nothing in G+