Google+ is Exciting Competition

Google+ is a HUGE product rollout from Google that is going to have Facebook shaking in it’s boots. It’s Google’s real social network that we’ve all been waiting for.

Google has tried before to bring social layers to Gmail with Google Buzz, and Wave among others. Those efforts were met with unfortunate issues ranging from privacy concerns, lack of APIs, and more. This time Google+ is in field trial mode, with a medium-sized set of users, but it even let users who received invites register because of a lack of available spaces. They’re really trying to keep it limited to a real TESTING phase.

If you have not checked out any of the features of Google+ yet, I strongly urge you to do so. It’s going to be extremely exciting to see the full product launch in the near future. It’s absolutely going to give Facebook a run for its money. I anticipate it’s going to be difficult to convince some less tech-savvy users to register, let alone attempt to make a real switch from one social network to another.

Here’s a video of the Circles feature, which really makes the boring organizational task of creating lists of friends, and sharing filters a less intimidating and daunting task.

It’s a nice design and take on a task that nobody ever wanted to do in the past. Hopefully Google+ is going to solve the issues that Facebook has, and I believe it can. Google has a massive amount of resources, and they clearly have a good design team behind them on this project, but hopefully I’ll have more to say once I get an invite…

Once I see that button on my Google interface I’ll likely be posting more updates with thoughts.