#blogjune 29 Google+

Yes I know that it is 3 July and I should have finished my 30 #blogjune posts by now. But on Thursday evening I did one and still had two to finish. Exhaustion got the better of me - as did a website and app I was wanting to comment on and which got into a loop when I tried to signin. I'll pursue that another time as it may just have been my tiredness and not the site.

The end of June of course coincided with the launch of Google+. I was annoyed to get onto it just as I was in the midst of end of year financial transactions and really haven't looked at it properly until this morning. Here's a link to a good Youtube introduction to it that I found when I was searching Google+ in my Sparks section.



At this point of time it is not possible to get a perfect prediction from the crystal ball, but I really like lots of things about it. I like the clean interface. I like the Circles and the ease with which you can add and take away people and the ease in which you can limit or broadcast your posts and Sparks. I really like the Sparks function which is, of course, building on the integral strengths of Google. And I like the way it is all part of a Google package: if I am using it I also have immediate access to Googledocs, Blogger, Youtube, Mail, Reader, Calendar, Picasa, etc. I don't use all of these regularly and some hardly ever but this is a strength of Google+. I haven't tried a Hangout yet and my experience with the mobile site on iTouch/iPad is that I prefer the web much more. Hopefully there will be an app soon.

At the moment with such a limited number of people participating my circles are only in the 80s and the majority are librarians with a few IT geeks thrown in for good measure. Maybe that has a lot to do with my limited range of acquaintance but I do know that the range of my followers and those I follow on both Facebook and Twitter is much broader than this. Will it have common appeal to say my extensive group of breast cancer friends on Facebook?