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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But the most addictive component of Google+ is something called Notifications. By clicking on the glaring red box that tells how many notifications you have waiting, you can see at a glance who Circled, or followed, you, who commented, +1’d (or “liked”) your posts or comments, and who reshared one of your posts.

Dangerously, Google+ becomes more addictive the more you use it. Simply understanding how Circles and following works enables you to constantly tweak and optimize what you see and who you interact with.

Gmail is an inseparable part of Google+

For my Google+ Diet, I’ve redirected all my e-mail communication through Google+. When I send e-mail, I simply post on Google+, and “address” the post to someone’s Google+ presence or to their e-mail address. One advantage of this is that the subsequent back-and-forth takes place on Google+’s wonderful commenting system.
Google Plus

* Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet
* Visual tour: 8 Google+ add-ons, extensions, and downloads
* 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+

When I receive e-mail I want to reply to, I paste it into Google+ and reply from there.

I also use e-mail still for non-communication purposes, such as reading my Google Alerts and Calendar notifications, and for submitting columns.

As you may have now suspected, avoiding e-mail is somewhat idiotic, for two reasons. First, the copying and pasting of incoming e-mail into Google+ isn’t easier than simply replying. And secondly, Gmail is, in fact, part of Google+. Gmail serves as its messaging system.

For most people wanting to try the Google+ Diet, my advice is to go ahead and use Gmail with it.

Google+ replaces Twitter easier than it replaces Facebook

The transition from Twitter to Google+ is way easier than from Facebook to Google+. The reason is that Google+ does almost everything Twitter does, but better. On Facebook, however the biggest “feature” is the user base. So if you’re having daily conversations with your old college buddies or high school BFFs, those just stop when you move to Google+. For now, at least.

While Google+ represents a minor potential — and eventual — challenge to Facebook’s long-term dominance, it represents an existential threat to Twitter. As I said in my column last week, Twitter is obsolete. It’s great at delivering a quick comment or link, but if you want to chat about it, Twitter is lousy.

Google+ can replace blogging

Big-name bloggers have already shut down their blogs and replaced them with their public posts on their Google+ profiles. Here’s mine. As you can see, it’s a blog!

Better still, it works like the best blogging platform, Tumblr. It’s easy for other users to re-blog or “share” your posts on their own “blog.” Commenting is great.

The only downsides are that you can’t customize it with a “theme” or custom design, and you can’t use advertising. But it’s only a matter of time before these features come to Google+, I would imagine.

Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet

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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As I explained in my column last week, the purpose of the experiment was to see if consolidating and streamlining all social activity into Google+ was possible and, if so, desirable. (You can follow my experiment here, even if you’re not a Google+ member.)

I was able to answer my two questions on day one of my Google+ Diet. Yes, it’s possible, and yes, it’s desirable.

More interestingly, however, I found out all kinds of surprising things about Google+ and about using Google+ as the one-and-only medium for online communication. Here’s what I learned:
Google Plus

* Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet
* Visual tour: 8 Google+ add-ons, extensions, and downloads
* 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+

A lot of people want to get on the Google+ Diet

I’ve been surprised by the number of people who want to get on the Google+ Diet. Social networking fatigue is an epidemic, and people are feeling overwhelmed by all the social networks and social media out there. Dozens of people have told me they’re going all-out on the Google+ Diet, and hundreds or thousands have apparently jumped into some version of it.

The most common approach: People are quitting Facebook and Twitter, and replacing them with Google+.

Google+ is the most ‘social’ social network

The social activity level on Google+ is off the charts. If you have 1,000 followers each on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, and ask a question, you will probably get 10 times the feedback on Google+.

It’s the feedback that’s motivating A-list bloggers like Digg founder Kevin Rose to shut down their blogs and redirect traffic to their Google+ profiles. I have found the same to be true.

To me, this is what social networking is all about. You share something, then people interact with you about that, giving you additional information, correcting your errors, expressing their opinions and sharing their own related stories. Google+ is by far the most social of all the social networks.

Google+ is highly addictive

I did not expect Google+ to be psychologically addictive. But I have felt the pull myself, and others have, too. It’s the only thing I’ve found online that draws you in like console video gaming.

I say this not to praise Google, but to predict that Google+ addiction may actually become a real problem in the future for some people.

There are two things about Google+ that cause this addiction. The first is the Stream, which is simply a running feed containing the posts of all the people you’re following on Google+. While Facebook’s News Feed is also a running stream of posts, it’s a censored stream. Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm is blocking the majority of posts from your friends from reaching your feed.