Getting to know Google+

Over the last few weeks we have been playing with Google+. It is the latest attempt by Google to enter the Social Networking game after a couple of less-than-stellar showings. You may have heard of Buzz, a twitter-like application; or Orkut, most popular in Brazil; or the now defunct Wave, which tried to be too many things.

We went at if with some skepticism and wondering whether users would have the want and energy to try to recreate their social lists all over again. Would there be enough compelling features to entice people to try it, and then to put the effort into gathering and organizing all their friends again? The answer to the first question is not quiet clear yet. However, G+ does have lots of great features that may gain enough supporters to make it a worthy competitor to facebook. Many of the weaknesses that facebook users learn to put-up with, have been addressed in G+, namely privacy and friend segmentation and organization. With the concept of Circles, G+ makes it really easy to drag-and-drop friends into separate categories. Thus making it very simple to keep or public and private lives separate.

Another great feature is called Hangouts. One can start a hangout any time and invite multiple fiends to join in for a multimedia conversation. This feature takes advantage of the proliferation of mobile devices with cameras to make it possible to have a video chat going with a couple of clicks and without having to install anything.

So far the invitation-only roll out has been very successful, gathering over 25 million accounts within a few weeks. That is exponentially faster than twitter and facebook took to get to this volume of users and there are lots of people requesting to be invited. This pace is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Quick rise of Google+

We have a few invites left. If you are interested, let us know and we can send one your way. We would love to have you join our circles. So, take a look at the video below to learn a little bit more about it and join. We think Google+ is here to stay.