Google+ Appreciation Station

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Wintermind

Vault Senior Citizen
Edit: Invites are currently CLOSED. They opened last night, around midnight, with Google intending to double their Field Trials Group. They did this in roughly an hour and a half.

So in case you live under a rock or someplace else that cuts you off from the civilized cloud, Google has just recently announced http://plus.google.com, Google's take on social networking. It's pretty goddamned awesome and has already made me not want to use facebook.

It is currently in limited field trials, and with many internet people trying desperately to get in, Google+ has been slow letting out invites and even slower letting people in, in accordance with their plans to balance their established infrastructure and userbase, while doing testing and all that stuff.

That said, it's pretty damn cool and they don't actually tell you how many invites you have to send/can't send so if anybody wants an invite, please just PM your email and I'll send you an invite, and then you can join the cool kids. Invites will be mailed out in the order they're received, come from an address at plus.google.com, and are totally awesome things.

The only downside to them is that if you're not up to registration at the moment, the page the invite will direct you to will just be the general splash screen. you can just close the window and try again later.

That said, is anybody on here actually part of google+ yet, and/or does anyone want to discuss it?
 
I've always been fond of Google and the weird things that they do.

It's great of you to offer that to the community to. Spreading something new that's infectious but not deadly.

Hope someone takes you up on the offer. I'll be tracking plus.google.com. After just moving from Myspace to Facebook I'm pooped. Cyber lag.
 
Anyone remember when Gmail came out? Was pretty hard to get invites at first, some didn't even believe it - how could they provide over 1 GB of storage? That was around the time when Hotmail would offer like 3 MB. Good times. :)

But I'm not into this social networking thing. Google is for searching, I've no need to create circles of friends. Sheesh, Facebook was bad enough.
 
I can't imagine Google+ replacing Facebook, even if I wanted it to. My social circles are too deeply entrenched in Facebook, and with Facebook already fielding 500 million+ users Google should have done this years ago.

Pretty much 98% of my online interaction is through Facebook now. All of my co-workers, family and friends use it with frequency and it's pretty much essential for scheduling any kind of outing or event. My gmail account has been collecting dust.
 
korindabar said:
I can't imagine Google+ replacing Facebook, even if I wanted it to. My social circles are too deeply entrenched in Facebook, and with Facebook already fielding 500 million+ users Google should have done this years ago.

Pretty much 98% of my online interaction is through Facebook now. All of my co-workers, family and friends use it with frequency and it's pretty much essential for scheduling any kind of outing or event. My gmail account has been collecting dust.
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They tried. Remember Google Wave? Wasn't excactly a huge success. Seems they abandoned that and just decided to make something closer to facebook.

Also relevant:
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google-vip.jpg
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I've fucked around with it when the beta started. It's OK I guess as far as social crap goes. Very easy to post things to certain groups of friends.

Main issues:
- You can't send private messages (or you couldn't when I tested it). But hey, you can send mail, right?
- You can't give a certain person another name or attach a note to their profile. I for one can't remember what the fuck the real life name is of a guy I only know on IRC from a NOC channel... I'd suspect similar issues with gamers.



One huge timing fuckup is that Google just announced they'll be deleting old non-public Google Profiles on the end of the month. Now, this doesn't make a difference for G+ users since by default the things needed to be public on your GP is already "visibily for anyone" on G+.

Still, I suspect the backlash from deleting non-public oldie GPs will reflect badly on G+.

Bad move, G-man.
 
You can share something with one person, it's awkward at first, but it's easy to get used to. You could use google chat, which is a billion times better than FB chat.

Nicknames would be awesome I think will likely end up coming down the pipe, eventually.

Additionally, if anybody wants to find me when they get in/are in, they can just search for my username.
 
We don't have retweet and facebook like buttons, why would we have a +1 tag?

If we ever add it, it'll be everything at once, including N4G, Digg and the like.
 
Actually, some Facebook integration would be pretty neat. I'd be more inclined to share articles across Twitter/Facebook, not that the site necessarily wants more viewer traffic. I'd love to help out with that.

This is what a 'liked' NMA page looks like on Facebook currently:

2mm75ee.png


Would need more metadata to have it show up with any kind of detail though.
 
I never got Facebook, or social networking in general. Why would you have the urge to document EVERY single thought online? "Bob is eating a turkey sandwhich, raise the roof". Who gives a flying f*ck?
 
SkuLL said:
But I'm not into this social networking thing. Google is for searching, I've no need to create circles of friends. Sheesh, Facebook was bad enough.
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Grin said:
I never got Facebook, or social networking in general. Why would you have the urge to document EVERY single thought online? "Bob is eating a turkey sandwhich, raise the roof". Who gives a flying f*ck?
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This. I hate Facebook with such a passion ...
 
Grin said:
I never got Facebook, or social networking in general. Why would you have the urge to document EVERY single thought online? "Bob is eating a turkey sandwhich, raise the roof". Who gives a flying f*ck?
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It's not that much different from a forum. How many forum posts do you see around here that you don't really care about? People post videos, pictures, conversation topics, etc. Other than it being a 'networking' site it's fundamentally the same, except it has a lot more features centered around interacting with people you actually know.

I've been using it for years and it's pretty much central to planning events or getting in contact with people. We don't send e-mails anymore, it's all Facebook messaging. Any picture we've ever taken of any trips, parties or whatever are there and easy to find for anyone. It also keeps us all more or less 'connected' even if indirectly. These are real life friends who I see regularly or wish I could see more often.
 
I've never had a problem with FB, really. Why the hate? It's full of idiots and narcissists, yeah... just like anywhere else people are going to congregate. It can also be a useful tool as long as you're not one of them and you possess a mature adult's capacity to ignore them. There have been times when Facebook has been a more reliable means of communication and information dissemination for me than the telephone, and there are studies (borne out by my own personal experiences) that people who use social networking sites "correctly" and don't go overboard or fall to friendwhoring and Zynga addiction tend to be more social and well-connected in the face-to-face world.

I often find friends' posts and reposts to be a diverse and constantly refreshing source of news, talking points, and cultural recommendations, and far better for that sort of thing than most other single sources I encounter over the course of the day.
 
Yamu said:
I often find friends' posts and reposts to be a diverse and constantly refreshing source of news, talking points, and cultural recommendations, and far better for that sort of thing than most other single sources I encounter over the course of the day.
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Exactly, it's also a fantastic event planner. And with the option to hide updates and ignore updates from users it can be customized pretty well. The only bad idea was to make all profile information wikipedia links.
 
With FB, privacy is a clusterfuck. With G+, it isn't.

That's enough to keep me using G+, never mind it's superior, cleaner, less otherwise irritating interface.

I also prefer the circle system to friends. It's just so much better, there aren't exactly words for it. Or atleast words I can put together. The G+ guys themselves could probably do it.

There isn't a built in function for planning events yet, and that's part of what I love about G+. I find it to be so much nicer and better of an experience and it's not even done yet.

Also, google has long since been for far more than just searching. There are so many goddamned things Google does more than searching. It's like using an encyclopedia as a door stop.
 
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