Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet II

After using only Google’s new social network for a week — forsaking all others — here’s what I learned

Computerworld – On July 8, I went on the Google+ Diet, using Google’s new social network for all my online communication. As part of the diet, I stopped using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and several other services. I even stopped using e-mail.

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From a Google+ Diet perspective, the advantage of replacing your blog with a Google+ profile is that blogging happens in the same space as everything else you do. Personally, I love not having a gazillion windows and tabs going with all my social activity. I just say what I want to say, then choose who I want to say it to.

Most people have no interest in leaving Facebook

My Circles that are full of editorial colleagues and brilliant strangers are frenetic hives of activity. But in my “Family” and “Friends” Circles there is nothing but the sound of crickets.

I’ve tried to convince the people I care most about on Facebook to come sign up for Google+, but most have no interest. I believe they’ll warm to it over time, but for now, it’s clear that most Facebook fans are firmly embedded in that social network.
Google Plus

* Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet
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* With 10M users, Google+ is becoming a social competitor
* Google races to create business version of Google+
* Privacy, contact updates added to Google+
* Can Facebook and Google+ coexist?
* Google+ fervor may be making Facebook nervous
* Google to developers: Stay tuned for Google+ tools
* Google+ hit with spam bug
* Visual tour: 10 Google+ tips for beginners

Continuing coverage: Google+

You can post on Twitter and Facebook and send e-mail all from Google+

Replacing other communications media with Google+ doesn’t mean they disappear elsewhere. There are multiple ways (browser plug-ins, RSS schemes and others) to have your Google+ posts appear or be linked to automatically on those other services. New apps and services are coming out every day that make this easy to do.

Google+ ends social networking fatigue, but can induce Google+ fatigue

Google makes it super easy to follow people, comment and interact on Google+. It also lacks Twitter- and Facebook-like limits on post size. As a result, it’s easy to over-commit, and end up with a fire hose of information that leaves you exhausted.

The cure for Google+ fatigue is to constantly un-Circle the least interesting people, or the people who are using up too much time with stuff you don’t like. It doesn’t happen by itself, unlike on Facebook where EdgeRank limits your incoming feed without any action on the part of the user.

Google+’s system for friending and following is harder to understand, but better in practice

Twitter and Facebook are easy to understand when it comes to friending and following. On Twitter, you see the posts of the people you follow. Period. On Facebook, you see the posts of the people you have friended (it takes two), minus the posts blocked by EdgeRank.

But Google+ is both more complex and better. On Google+, you “follow” people by putting them into Circles — say, one for “Friends,” another for “Family” and another for “Co-workers.” When you click on a “Stream” icon, you see the posts of all your Circles. Or you can choose the posts only of any one Circle.