I’ve now been on Google+ for about a week. When I first saw it, it was nice – something to have a play around with when I’m not on Twitter. 7 days later – It’s growing on me like a raging infection. (In a good way).

I am a staunch hater of Facebook – I can’t bear the bloated nonsense that it contains, mafias, pirates, farmville, the whole thing. It’s just cringeworthy and not my cup of tea. And then Google comes along and brings something to the table which in some ways is ‘similar’ to how Facebook looks…..but they’ve taken it a stage further. They’ve turned it into something far more useful, far more ‘social’, that you as the user can have far more control over who can see what.

They’ve definitely seen what Facebook made the mistake with – privacy. So with G+, you can select what content goes to which ‘circles’, or lists of your contacts. Some of your posts may be more applicable to your work friends, others your home friends, holiday buddies, drinking buddies, family, parents, you name it. You can specifically select on each post where you want your message to go – to all your circles, or just a select few. This, to me, is what Facebook should have done a long time ago.

Straight out the box, it feels more fresh, lively and something that’s just rejuvinated compared to other media channels out there – it actually, in my opinion, (disregarding the fact that I’m not a fan of it anyway),  makes Facebook look quite tired.

The ‘hangout’ feature is superb, too – a group video chat platform, which again, you can invite specific circles or contacts to for each hangout. This I see as being something very cool for businesses, using it for video conferencing.

Google+ is still in a limited usage right now, but I can’t imagine it’ll be long before they let it out into the wild properly, and when it does, I think there’ll be a massive surge for people signing up to see what it’s all about. I have it open in a different window all day every day, as more and more of my colleagues and friends are getting access, it’s a great platform to be on.

So, all in all, I have to say, I absolutely love it, and it will be my main (along with Twitter) social media channel of choice for the foreseeable future.

If you’re not on it and would like an invite, let me know and I will send you one out. (If you have a Gmail account, these seemingly works quicker with some people I’ve invited so far)

So, check it out, get stuck in, and tell me what you think of it!