Review: Google+ first impressions

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Google Inc just announced their own facebook-like social network, Google+, in an attempt to evolve how people use their social network accounts by making social networks more interactive and realistic. Unfortunately, Google+ isn’t yet available for all users as it is still on a ‘beta stage’ while google still conducts tests. Google sent invites to some selected few to try out their new product. Beta testers are allowed to invite friends on their network though but the Google+ signup page isn’t yet accepting new applicants.

Fortunately, I was one of the lucky few to register a Google+ account today. Getting an invite might be that easy for those who got a friend whose initially got an official google+ invite, but it actually took hours for me to finally got 1. My google+ signing up experience though is rather strange as I’ve already given up signing when google announced a ‘freeze-signup’ on the google+ page. But I experienced some sort of a glitch on the invite process. I just clicked a friend’s Google+ status update, sent to me through my gmail account, and voila! It gave me this page containing a link to sign-in!

I then proceeded to click on ‘sign-in’ and it gave me a window to finally sign-up.

Here’s what Google+ like inside on its lemon state -

Google+ interface is rather impressive. First thing that came to my mind when I saw it was it looks as if it’s facebook’s little sister. But Google managed to execute HTML5 at its best, creating a very user friendly interface. Google initially created Google+ with 3 major features called Circles, Sparks and hangouts.

Circles allow customizing groups by dragging and dropping various people’s names on your friend-list. This is where you add friends, Acquaintances, Family and other fully customized groups under this category.

Sparks is a feature that allows you to create a category to ‘share’ on a selected circles. It is much like a privacy feature as it allows you to share your whereabouts strictly to your selected circles.

Hangouts is where you can do video chats with friends. It can also be customized by choosing specific group on your circles to do a video chat. It also allows users to share a youtube video while on a video chat conference.

All in all, Google+ beautifully represents the future of social media. Google integrates features that people really wanted for a long time. Facebook might have the ‘crowd’ advantage but I’m seeing Google+ to be the next big thing in social media networks. Though with some flaws such as not allowing people below 18 to join the club that might lead to fake age identities, Google+ executed things that might bring millions of existing and growing number of user’s head a second turn.

Have you already tried the Google+ experience? Join our poll and share your experience on the comments section below and let us know what you think about it. Additionally, you can also include your email on the email box field under ‘leave a comment’ section below so I could invite you as a beta tester. 

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