Over the past week, I’ve been spending an increasing amount of time with Google Plus. The service is the latest attempt by Google to battle Facebook and Twitter on the social networking front after two of its previous efforts, Google Wave (like a chat room on steroids) and Google Buzz (a Twitterlike way to share info) fizzled.
Google Plus, which started as a test among a selected group, has been opening and closing access to new users. You can check availability at google.com/plus.
What is it: Google Plus pulls together real-time status updates and photos from friends, and allows you to organize your Google contacts (say, those you gathered with Gmail) into neat, easy-to-view “Circles.” There’s also a neat feature called “Hangouts,” which allows for no-fuss video chatting with up to 10 people at a time. The feature is so intriguing that Dell Inc. founder and CEO Michael Dell recently stopped in on a Dell employee Hangout to check out the feature.
Will it replace Facebook and Twitter? Not yet. The service is still a little buggy, and it’s unclear so far how Plus will set itself apart from these more established social networks. But it’s definitely got everyone’s attention, including Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, who, shortly after Plus debuted, became its most popular user.
Right now Plus feels a bit cobbled-together and not as intuitive to navigate as it could be. But Google is tweaking it daily and making constant improvements.
Our take: So far, Google Plus looks like a mix of ideas borrowed from other sites with fairly tight integration with Google Chat (including video), Gmail, Buzz and Picasa. Missing so far: that kind of integration with Google Docs, Calendar or, surprisingly, Google’s recent efforts to make search more social.Note to cyber slackers: cover your tracks. In a recent case, Fair Work Australia ruled in favour of the former employee as neither party could provide
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