I learn fascinating new things every time I have a chat with my friend, Steve Harris. We had met for lunch yesterday and got talking about the things we like about G+.
Steve mentioned that G+ is what blogging should have been years ago. G+ isn’t a social network. It’s a social layer.
It’s short
Steve explained his dislike of having to write an essay on a blog. To paraphrase, “Why do I need to do all that work for only a few people to read?” (D’oh! -editor’s note). On G+, you can post with minimal words and get more eyeballs (see next item below). And it’s easily shareable both in and outside of G+.
You don’t have to post to everyone
Steve makes a good point. Since the people we follow are grouped into circles, whatever we share on G+ is seen by whoever we choose. That keeps your “G+ blog” a lot more relevant to your followers. see “TMI” below.
Nobody seems to use Facebook’s group feature anyway
Do people really use its groups feature? I still get bombarded by inspirational quotes, snarky status updates about whatever, announcements that someone’s reading “50 Shades of Grey”. In other words, items that just aren’t relevant to me. Or their other Facebook friends for that matter. It’s a relic from the early days when Facebook was meant to connect with your real life friends.
Oh but you can control what you see on Facebook! Facebook is high maintenance. I’ve wasted too much time trying to configure every person yet I still get blocked items coming through. Particularly on the mobile app. I wish my friends would ditch Facebook or Facebook goes back to school to brush up on mobiel and UX.
TMI
Speaking of Facebook, do I really need to know that every so-and-so liked whatever? So-and-so commented or liked a photo on the wall of someone who I don’t even follow? I’m all for serendipity, unless of course, the shared item happens to be something I’m interested in but that tends to be rare on Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks to circles, G+ has a lot less useless information overload. I don’t need to see another inspirational quote interrupting my catching up. Distraction on top of distraction. Might as well stick an ad in my Facebook news feed.
Thank goodness G+ has no such notification system. In fact, it wasn’t until Steve mentioned it that I realized I didn’t even miss it.
Nearby feature
The “nearby” feature on the G+ mobile site came in handy for Steve while he was at SXSW this year. “This was a lot more useful than Twitter. And I didn’t even need to follow anyone”, Steve told me. He was able to find out what was going on around him without cluttering up his circles.
Yes, some Twitter mobile apps come with this feature but this is standard on the G+ mobile site. Less maintenance.
Steve had told me of another story where he was watching a Toronto FC game at BMO Stadium. Using the nearby feature allowed Steve to see photos of the game from different angles as people were snapping and posting photos to G+. What a cool way to share an experience at an event!
SEO, of course.
There are loads of Google juice all over G+ posts.
It’s clean interface, in intrusive experience and complete respect to who I want to post to makes it a great contender of becoming the blogging platform of choice. Though only time will tell if this comes true.