Google+ Anyone

[hoppe999]

Just wondering if anyone uses Google+. It might be neat to have a circle for fellow pipe aficionados. Just an idea...

 

[LIPIPE]

Tell me more....How is it set up? What are the benefits? How would it work? Who would monitor the site?

 

[Doc Manhattan]

I'm an early adopter for G+... so far it's not all that impressive. Circles are a clever idea. The formatting options are a big step up from the FB equivalent. It does most of what it does pretty well. The primary win of G+ is not being Facebook.

The biggest impediment right now is scale: it's not generally open yet, so it's not much of a community. Fewer people means that bugs are found more slowly, though their team has been pretty good about trying to patch up and expand behind the scenes.

Also, it's slightly better than FB on privacy/identity, though neither is much good and G+ has its own woes on that front.

 

[Doc Manhattan]

P.S. As far as monitoring/oversight, G+ Circles aren't really like groups per se. Circles are a filing system, mostly for outgoing content.

My placing you in a "Pipe Friends" circle means that you can (if you want) see things I broadcast to that group (as well as anything I broadcast as public content.) You could add me to a "Pipe Friends" circle of your own and do the same, but the two circles would NOT be the same thing. You do your own individual filtering, blocking, etc.

It's not a group, but considering how crappy Facebook groups are, maybe that's for the best.

 

[skaukatt]

I read that you can only access it via an invite. I downloaded the app to my droid and received a message that it is in beta and has as many "testers" as needed right now. I don't think they are taking any additional users at the moment. I'd like an invite eventually...

 

[Doc Manhattan]

It is by invite right now, and I meant to add all my invites are spoken for already (or I would have offered upfront.)

 

[Guy]

Talk Pipes..... this place seems to be the best game in town, but I do not spend much time in Cyberspace.

 

[Blue Max]

I've had it for a while now and it seems like not much is going on. I believe it will catch on and do well but for now all the action is at FB.

 

[TreverT]

I've had an account on G+ for a month now and really like it. From a professional's perspective, it's a vast improvement over FB and Twitter in being able to separate out my personal and pipe-related postings. On G+ I have a "Pipe people" circle, and they get all the website updates, previews of pipes to come, "making of" photos, etc. I can keep that stuff apart from my casual conversations with my friends and all my Kentucky Fried Popcorn movie-related postings. It's really nice to be able to divide my interests up like that.

Also, it's growing at an amazing rate. In one short month, my "Pipe People" circle on G+ is nearly as large as my Twitter follower group that took two years to build. It still has a long way to go before the numbers eclipse FB, but I suspect it may get there.

It is different in character than FB. I think we may see another social group fracture along the lines of the MySpace-to-FB split, where MySpace was left entirely as the domain of tweens posting to each other about their high school garage bands. G+ seems to be absorbing the more literate folks off of FB, and might well end up leaving FB as the network for Farmville addicts and stay-at-home moms posting pictures of their cat. For comparison, I know if I look at my FB stream, it's going to be filled with a whole lot of stupid, but my G+ stream is consistently interesting and savvy thanks to some careful circle building. I am really interested to see where this will go. My one big concern is that Google may cancel it if it doesn't become the giant mega-hit they want overnight, just as they did with Buzz, Wave, etc.

Oh, and here's me if anyone wants to link up over there:

TT on G+

 

[velveteagle]

Great post Trever.. I have Google + but as yet have done nothing with it as its in testing stage and I must study it a bit..
I shall check your TT G+ out.. Thanks..

 

[TreverT]

The biggest limitation I've found so far is the inability to request being in a specific circle, or to have some sort of public circles. I can understand keeping personal circles private such as with "High school people I never wanted to hear from again", but in my case it's a tricky situation sometimes because I've gotten a lot of contacts from people that I don't know who they are, or what circle to put them in. Sometimes it's handily obvious - "X has added you to their circles" and you go look and X is a smiling guy smoking a pipe, so I know which of my circles to put him into. Other times, though, it is tricky. Some random guy may add me and his profile gives no clues... Is he a pipe guy? Is he a drive-in movie fan? Is he one of the crew that watches Netflix movies with us via Twitter every weekend? I have no clue, and thus have to make wild guesses as to which circle this person should be added to. That's the biggest weakness of the system so far, IMO. It's a great setup if you have really obvious personal circles, like Family, Friends, and Work, but if you're a business that people want to get updates from, it's hard to guess if someone is interested in pipe stuff or not.

(I could always just make all my pipe updates public, but then that would annoy all my non-pipe-related friends, which is why I keep them in their own circle)

Also, I could just dump people en masse into the pipe circle but I hate the idea of advertising to someone who did not specifically want to be there. It's a difficult situation.

 

[Guy]

There are many sophisticated musicians and artists using Myspace Music to showcase music samples and network, not all are teens in garage bands.

 

[TreverT]

There are many sophisticated musicians and artists using Myspace Music to showcase music samples and network, not all are teens in garage bands.

I plead ignorance due to my total inability to even read or understand the typical MySpace page. :twisted:

 

[Guy]

There are many sophisticated musicians and artists using Myspace Music to showcase music samples and network, not all are teens in garage bands.

I plead ignorance due to my total inability to even read or understand the typical MySpace page.

I also have no idea what that page says, I was not talking about the morons and sadly there are some.

 

[msmith1956]

I'm on it... a bunch of us on another pipe forum us it.

 

[juni]

Off all my tech savvy friends the pipe smokers seems to be the earliest adopters of google+. :lol:

 

[Aaron]

I am on there as well.

 

[Phill_osophical]

I am on there feel free to add me to a circle!

- Google+ http://bit.ly/qzEfqo

 

[Thomas Tkach]

G+ seems to be absorbing the more literate folks off of FB

Sounds like facebook when you had to be in college to get it. Not everyone in college is literate, but there aren't any of these:

stay-at-home moms posting pictures of their cat

They bug me.