Google+ & Where It Might Take Social Media

Few days ago, Google launched Google+, a long-rumored social network platform. I was one of the few lucky users who got an invitation the 2nd day of the launch before Google decided to lock down the invitation mechanism.

As a new platform, it is still in beta release and Google is listening closely to their users and one of the quick responses came from their Product Manager regarding the privacy issue that many users raised.

But the problem are not those little details, it is more about the change that will happen in the social media scene in overall. For friends sharing there is Facebook, for quick sharing there is Twitter and for professional sharing there is LinkedIn, is it Tumblr, Quora, Foursquare or Foodspotting … where really Google+ stand in this crowd??

Is it a mix of all social networks? In my opinion, Google+ will not shake Facebook, not now not later, Twitter might lose some market share at the beginning but if they are good they can maintain their positioning and come back and LinkedIn is on a totally different category but they also need to be careful. I guess it is too early to know or discover exactly what will happen before the service stabilizes and open its doors back to all users and we hear more buzz about it.

So far for me, the mainstream is still Twitter and neither my real friends from Facebook are already on G+ nor my professional contacts from LinkedIn, mostly my contacts on G+ are my virtual friends. And I still find it funny to post on 2 different services.

Another rumor is running online about Google+ for brands and businesses, this might be a threat for Foursquare and Gowalla with the power of Google Map and the location sharing feature of Google+, another feature we have to wait for.

Also many people and developers are waiting for the API to ship, that will open more doors. If you are a developer and reading this, please launch a plugin to post to G+ from self-hosted wordpress blog, that would make my life easier.

On the other hand, the G+ Android app I have been using for the last few days on my Galaxy S, is ok.

And because Google+ profiles URLs are long ones, somebody created Gplus.to, it is a little web app that’s essentially a link shortening tool, except that it allows you to set the username shown in the URL. All you need is your Google+ ID — the long string of numbers that currently makes the URLs so ugly — and to plug in your name, and you’re are done. Mine is gplus.to/krikor

Two questions for Google+ or for people who are active on the network:
1) How can I know if someone mentioned me in the stream if I have disabled the notifications?
2) How can I favorite a post from the stream to read later, on both the site and mobile app?

As long as Google+ is still trending mainly on Twitter, we have to wait to see where Google will be taking social media networking.

Meanwhile, enjoy this video from Meet the Fockers, these guys were into circles way before Google+