Google plus has been open a while now, the initial wave of people were mostly the Geeks who were only to happy to jump on a newfangled social media ‘thing’ and to further there so called circle of friends. What is missing is ‘normal’ people, here is a comment someone posted:

Now, if I filter out Internet Friends, Following and Acquaintances from my main Google+ stream… I SEE NO UPDATES.

Why have the masses not jumped ship from Facebook or Twitter yet? What use does G+ actually have and how about the future?

What Does G+ Give you?

The first ability is to add people to Circles, this means you can group people as you see fit and the latter part allows you to only send a message out to a certain group for example. Facebook had this for a while in a sense, I used to use this all the time on facebook so that only people at work for example seen certain posts.

The next is the posts themselves, these can include pictures, videos, links and your location. What happened here was people used this function to post cat pictures by the bucketload, this function reminds me of Tumblr in fact.

The Hangout is the ONLY feature that allowed G+ to live beyond the experimental stage and if marketed right, is a killer application on it’s own. I saw a drop in the number of people prepared to start or be in a hangout as time has gone on though, maybe the novelty has worn off?

Why are people still on Facebook?

Facebook & Twitter have clients right on my phone, on my iPad and computer, I do not need to keep visiting a web page to see what has been written. If you are already on a site or service, unless the new place offers something new and exciting – they why would people move? I have people on my G+ from work but they never post anything, it was just something they joined as it was new but once they saw nobody they knew was either on it or posting anything, they quickly forgot about it.

What needs to be done?

Like I mentioned above, there needs to be application on everything so that at any given notice I can see if there is a Hangout happening, a new post and so forth. What about better ways to filter the information? For example do I really need to stop following somebody just because they post a constant stream of junk? Why not allow me to hide this info but keep them on my books so I can hangout with them if needed?

At the end of the day though, it is up to you  to make your friends and family come across and use it, we cannot sit and wait for Google to sugar coat it. At the moment I see it as two things:

1. A Glorified Twitter
2. Skype on Steroids

I have never really been a great fan of Social Media, I just fail to see the bigger picture on what it is meant to do for you and in my eyes just lets everybody know your business. When Google plus came about, it was exciting at first but as time moved on, it just became the very same as the rest, people spamming stuff on there and touting there business. What caused me to pull back once again from my chosen social sites? What made me drop contact with people I respected and treated as friends? What made me jump right back to Skype?

 Twitter

I recall having about 3 Accounts in my time with Twitter and I dumped them all a long time back, I did come back to Twitter with the name of LiquidTV and used it to tweet out every-time I posted a new blog post. There was two things I noticed though, some people used it only to tweet about there business and of course they did this frequently and the other was an almost constant stream of links to blog posts. I am not interested in either of them subjects and you may say “Well you tweeted about your blog posts” – you need to understand I write one every now and then and I have even took this plug-in off now.

It all ended with me removing a handful of people, blocking all the bots that were following me and locking my account down.  I have noticed Bots tend not to try and follow accounts locked down and only those who I allow can see what I am writing.

Facebook

Still to this day my account remains disabled, my wife still uses it and I can understand now why I got rid of this thing, it is almost like waiting for some gossip to come along rather then some great family photo’s. I do not miss people walking up to me at work and asking about what I wrote about on facebook, if people need to get in contact with me, they email me (which they do).

Google plus

This was the most exciting of the media sharing things out there and at the start the Hangout Feature with max of ten people was brilliant. A Friday night was the venue for Beer and a good laugh with a circle of people but as time moved on, people started to drop off, either by choice or if we happen to upset them.

The problem started with the same people spamming the same crap on G+ as well as twitter, no point in seeing it twice right. Some people just posted that much that by the time I come to have a look what was going on – the important stuff probably dropped off the front page. I first got rid of all the people that I never knew, I then turned to the people who were not following me back and finally removing the people who spend there life it seems posting on G+

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

I have a problem with text based chat such as MSN, IRC and others – not only do I have to read what is been typed but I have to type my response back. In other words it takes me away from what I am doing at that time. I can understand if the room I am in has loads of people in there and it relates to a live show but when you have like 3 active people, I fail to see the point. I kept one server on my list for the odd time I may jump on there but the rest have all but gone.

Conclusion

Technology comes and goes as do people, remember that the people you meet and speak to on-line – you do not really know them. The difference between on-line and reality is that it is very easy to just stop using the services or remove the people from the list and you no longer have anything to do with them.

I have removed tweet deck from my mac, the windows 7 gadget is also gone, removed it from my phone and at the moment just check it using the website. I still look now and that at Google+ but rarely see any hangouts these days, if at all. I am back to running Skype when I am around and fancy a chat with people as I can carry on working while chatting and if needed, put myself on Do not disturb.

The bottom line is I want a service that lets me communicate with people, If I wanted to know the news there is a lot of sites that provide this, gadgets and widgets galore. It like reading about somebody giving away money in Peru for the next 30 minutes, pointless for me to read about that right.

Google gave a fantastic tool not so long back to the chosen few called Google+ and unlike Buzz before it, this one actually could look like it will work. While the rest of the product is some fluff that on it’s own would be no different to twitter and such, it’s the hangout’s that are the cream of the crop. At the moment in Beta, there is limited control in who does what and it is pup to the people in the hangout to keep control somehow. I have started to see cracks though forming as people revert to more traditional methods (such as Skype).

The Early Days

I remember when almost everybody was having hangouts as part of there live show, a means to overcome running Skype on each machine to get a panel of 4 and generally everybody talking. There was the odd time when a person came in and caused problems and the only solution to this would be to block that person or just remove them from your circles or even create select groups for hangouts.

Lack of control

If we look at say Skype, if there was 5 people in there and one person was a problem, it is easy just to drop that person out and refuse them back in, problem solved. The problem in Hangouts was, just like real life when a group of people talk, if one person is talking over the others all the time, this presents a problem. Google have given us the Mute button but the person can just un-mute and carry on talking.

Streams and Multi posting

Sometimes you follow the same people on Twitter, the websites they run and Google+ and when I have found is they post the same stuff right across all of these formats, which I find annoying to say the least. I find that Google+ is used to post pictures, videos and stories from other sites, not very often do I see a person actual typing a story out, maybe people have grown used to twitter short format?

The case of blocking people

If you block somebody or they block you, when you try and get into a hangout, it lets you know you cannot enter. This is fine when everybody agree’s they want to ignore the same person but is a problem as groups grow bigger and such.

Falling back to the old ways

Once people see less and less hangouts – I feel they will revert to the old ways of Skype, the good thing about this is that you do not need a camera and can have a quick chat then drop off. What are people feeling towards Google+ Hangouts? I still think they are great of course as I chat to people all the time, maybe it depends on how wide your social circle is?

I thought I would write a quick overview of what to expect in the current form of google plus, as many people will already have this, I will be preaching to the converted but I do offer some thoughts on what I think is wrong with the service and also how they could make it better. I got into Google plus by way of an invite, I think they have now opened this up to everybody when I last checked as long as you have a google mail account. They say it is meant to be a FaceBook Killer but of course it has a long way to go before it can over take such a thing.

Circles

The first part we need to talk about is Circles, this lets you place people that you know about into a circle and you can call them whatever you want. The purpose of grouping them will come into play later on when we talk about other features and you can have people in as many circles as you want. This process is all drag and drop, the initial circles already made are Friends, Family and Acquaintances.

Finding people to follow

once you had added some people, goggle starts to suggest people who you may want to follow in the find and invite section. These people are from your existing circles and they follow them, goggle thinks maybe you know them also (much like facebook friends finder) .

Stream

The main meat and veg of Google plus is the stream, this is a lot like facebook in that people can make a post and people can comment on that. This is different to Twitter though in that you can see the replies even if you are not following the people and if a post gets popular, this can eat up most of the page (more of that later). You can Mute a Post so it no longer appears and report it for spam and so forth.

Hangout

If there is one feature that is keeping google plus ahead of the game right now, then it has to be Hangouts. You install a small plug-in for your browser and you can either start a Hangout or you can join one. When you first click the icon, it shows you the camera shit and the meter for your microphone to let you get ready to start a chat and then you can jump in there. You get to choose were you want to advertise the fact you have a hangout (these been circles) and away you go. People will see in there Timeline you have a Hangout and they can join at will. The limit I have heard is 10 people, that 9 people joining and the host. As people speak, the video changes on the main display (were it says Invite more people on the pic above) but you can select a person and they will be the only one’s to display, this function works by voice, even a cough can switch the camera to you.

Some bugs at this stage

Of course this is beta and there is a lot to iron out but I spotted a few things that are not quite right. The first one is that to change camera or audio device, the settings do not work, they simple revert to the old settings upon closing. The way around this is to go into the Gmail Settings, Chat and change what you need in there, this keeps the settings. The next thing is streams, if people post and then a lot of replies, I would have expected a ‘Roll up’ feature (or hide) like facebook, it does shrink eventaully to a few posts but not straight away.

The next thing is the Hangouts, although you can Mute a person, they can just un-mute themselves and be back talking and there is no way that I have found to kick somebody at this stage. When you start a Hangout, in theory only the people you selected can see this but if you post the URL, anybody can join.

Comparing it to other services

Facebook is probably the closest thing to this and the way I use facebook is by adding people to groups and for the most part I send out a post so everyone can see it. There are times though that I make sure that some of my posts are only send to say Family as the information is not relevant to the entire facebook system. They (as in Facebook) could make this process a lot simpler, much in the same way as circles, maybe that might come later. Facebook is currently going to start video chat and this is by using Skype as the medium but will people figure that out apart from the Tech people? The other appeal about facebook is that it is on every mobile device out there, something google has not got yet.

Fake name verus real name

Twitter works on Fake names (some people use real name of course) and I follow people that I have never seen, spoke to or met in my entire life and they will have no idea who LiquidTv is other than a name on twitter. Facebook works on real names (or at least it is meant to) as you are adding people you know in one shape or another. Google Plus works from your Gmail details and you will see a lot more ‘proper’ names then before. There is still people that hide behind a twitter like name with a graphics as a picture which is a shame. 

Facebook has been around for some time now and it overtook MySpace back in the day. It works by you added people for which they have to accept and any posts that people do, be it a simple line of text, a video or photo’s – will appear in the time-line. It went further of later as it allowed you to put people into groups and then instead of writing a post that made no sense to work people, you can specify Family only for example.

I like to think Facebook is a big bulletin board that people you know can leave messages on detailing what they are doing, post new pictures and so forth. It is ideal for example if someone just had a new baby and everybody can get to see the pictures quickly. My question though is this – “Just what do you write on Facebook Status updates that people won’t deem boring?”

Two recent examples

I was using Facebook to write down what I was doing at the time, only things that were of some importance of course like my having to keep going back and forth to various stores when I was getting my bathroom done. While 1/3rd found this interesting (in case they use the same store to do there bathroom or kitchen for example), another 1/3rd probably just ignored the posts and the last 1/3rd got annoyed that I was posting so much. One went to the trouble to ask “do you always detail your life on facebook?” – to which I removed her from my list.

The next one was more recent – a few of us from work went out on a night out, many pictures were taken and a good night was had by all. I was confused at first as people mentioned they had seem the pictures of me, yet I had not seen any on my Facebook. Later on after more people had made mention, I asked who had shared them. I checked this person who I had previously had on my friends list only to find they were now not on my list. I called this person and they explained that my posts were “boring” and if I promise not to keep writing such posts, I can add them again – needless to say this will not happen any time soon of course.

What is the purpose then?

I was very active from March this year talking all the time about training, I can understand that this can turn people off as it will get boring. I do not go out every weekend getting drunk like some of them and my life is mage interesting every second of the day. I post what I feel people might want to know but it seems you cannot please them all. People get offended if you remove them (and visa versa) as this is treated as you saying “I do not want to be friends with you any longer”. Some people have 1000′s of friends which most they do not even know at all – very odd.

The question here then is simple:

Do you just stop posting updates unless it is something major? Do you get rid of these people and carry on posting anyhow? Do you disable your account and forget about the world of facebook?

For now, I shall just keep my posts down to basic info…

On the 20th Feb 2011 I finally created a new Twitter account and started to use it, before hand I started to use Facebook a lot more than I had before by adding a lot of people from work as well as friends and family. I thought I would pass on my thoughts on both medium and how they are working out, I would also like to get other people views on why they prefer one over another. Twitter is a limited medium in my own mind as it needs extra services such as Twitpic to share pictures and URL shortener to fit links into posts. With Twitter you only get half of the story which means unless I am following everybody on a certain list of people, I miss the tweets if I do not go to twitter account on-line and read the full flow of posts. How does this match up with facebook?

Facebook

If you ignore all the game requests and such, most of what you need to do on Facebook is right there on a webpage, this means I can look at it from work, from home, on my iPad and even my Phone. I can share a story or a picture with either everybody on my list of just a select few as I have grouped everybody on how I know them (Work, Friends, Family). This means I can target a message so that it makes sense to the end people, If I am writing something about work that only work would understand the meaning of – I push out a message to only the group at work and so forth with Family etc.

I get to see the full conversation even If I am not following that person unless that person has gone into the settings and made sure this does not happen, this allows for a more natural flow of conversation. When I do reply to a post, it is stored underneath that post, not on a random time line. I can delete what I have written and the final aspect is I know in real life almost every single one on my profile (I think there is two who I have not met in real life – Yet).

I see Facebook as a place to share information quickly across all of my family and friends, share photo’s of events and catch up on what everybody is doing. I have used facebook to get phone numbers (those that have supplied them anyway) and even a way to chat with people, quicker than email and shorter than phoning them.

Twitter

The issue I always had with twitter is its impersonal, I do not really know the people on my list other than speaking to them on-line at some point (some of them) and the other half are faceless companies. If you have a small following (such as I have) then sending out a message is like shouting in an empty room, yes you got the message out but did anyone hear you?

You can sit and read any persons Twitter feed unless they lock it down, yes you only get half of the conversation but you can almost track them 24 hours a day on what they are doing, as some like to Tweet out every bit of there day.

Some thoughts

Somebody on my Facebook asked me “Are you using this as your personal diary” and they were responding to the fact that I was updating every single day of my gym session along with how I felt later. I removed that person because what they posted was not the same thing? I have cut back on using facebook to document every second of my life but I like to post something now and then otherwise if everyone did that, the time line would be dead really.

Finally – The sites (including Facebook) that allow you to check in to places? I fail to see how this is a good thing. If a person on Facebook told me that they were at a pub in town, that great, no need to GPS co-ordinates and if a person who is on the other side of the world tells me they are at some amazing place – why would I even care? I am not about to join them.

We all know December is the longest and most unfair month of the year: why wait until the 25th to receive your Christmas presents? We at Gameloft have decided to put an end to this mean practice by offering a surprise gift every day in December until Christmas to all our fans and anyone who is in the festive spirit.

And the best part is how simple it is! Every day Gameloft announce our surprise on our Twitter account (http://twitter.com/gameloft). All you have to do is click on the link in the tweet to enjoy your present. What can you get? A free game to play on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android device, or on Facebook? Exclusive sneak peeks or cool goodies for our hottest upcoming Christmas games? Crazy game discounts? Special, free in-game content? Rest assured you’ll get all this and a little bit more in the end… that is, if you don’t miss a day! So follow @Gameloft on Twitter and, starting December 1, check your timeline every day to discover your gift.

Enjoy Gameloft Twitter Advent Calendar and have a great holiday season!

For today (the 1st Dec 2010) they are offering Driver for the ipod, iphone, ipad and rememebr this only lasts 24 hours – so be very quick if you want this free game.

You may have noticed if you logged into facebook recently a message telling you about some up-coming features. From my brief reading, it sounded like something I had mentioned many times that should be there by default.

Groups

Facebook is great to share infomation, pictures and the like but you have to be careful of who you add. You might have read the stories of people writing how much they hate there job only to find they forgot they added there boss to the list and loose there job as a result. Facebook introduced groups a while back and this lets you put people in whatever list you seem fit – such as Work, Friends & Family. As of now, I saw nothing you could do with these lists.

The master plan

It sprang to my mind that it woul dbe great if you could post something and choose what group see this infomation, then only my family get to see the pictures of the cat while my friends get to see the dunken nights out and so forth. This is what Facebook are indeed planning from what I gather and if this comes in – i can see facebook not only been used a lot more but adding more people to the mix.

Thoughts

Will this new move along with Google Wave dampen Twitter which has limited ability to get a message across and no way to put people into groups?

AlertThingy brings the very latest updates from your favourite social networks direct to your desktop. Send Tweets, update your Facebook status, upload photos to Flickr, post to Tumblr and more. For business users we have Yammer, Basecamp and Huddle integrations. So you can mix work and play.

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Quickly see all of your friends and contacts from different networks through the Contacts list. Easily create groups of contacts to see only alerts relating to them.

If like me you are not happy with a static wallaper day after day – the choice here is to get a piece of software that will cycle through your wallpaper on a timed basis and there is no better FREE Software then John’s Background Switcher {Windows}. You can set various options such as having a different picture per screen (on a Multi Screen desktop), how often it should change and so forth.

As you can see form the Screenshot Above – ot supports grabbing images from the internet as well such as Flickr, SmugMug and even RSS Feeds. It is Freeware and updated to include more choices – I personally use this on all my desktops that use Windows, Mac OS X has it built in and Linux has a addon that does the same job, so no programs are needed for these platforms.