My take on Google+

Google+
Google+ is the latest entrant in the domain of SNS. Coming from the stables of Google which gave us Orkut, Wave and Buzz, this is the company’s struggle to regain its footings in SNS. It is main features are-
• Circles
• Hangouts
• Sparks
Circles- Google has literally taken the meaning of “circle of friends”. It is a feature to manage your contacts (“friends”). You can adjust your privacy settings for different ‘circles’. A very important feature is you don’t have to ‘friend’ someone to receive his/her updates. A feature copied from Twitter is ‘following’ and ‘followers’ which have become ‘people in your circle’ and ‘people who have added you’. (The concept of circles is not new. It can also be found on www.FreindCircles.com.)
Hangouts- This is like integrating Yahoo chat with GTalk. It has a limit of up to 10 participants. A nice thing is that you can find topic of interest for discussion rather than searching for some partner in all chat rooms.
Sparks- It has been described as a FeedBurner. I haven’t really understood what it for is.
Privacy settings are good. You can control all your Google Accounts at once using Dashboard. A funny option I found in ‘edit profile’ was “bragging rights”.
An avid Facebook user will find that ‘like’ button has been replaced by ‘+1’. Another thing is that whatever you post can be shared by others (something like retweet on Twitter). On Facebook everything except status updates can be shared. You may not find tabs like ‘Notes’, ‘Questions’, etc. For that you’ll have to use other Google products like ‘GDocs’, ‘Polls’ etc. and share their links. ‘Apps’ which make Facebook fun, is missing.
For more action keep growing your ‘circle’.
Finally, it looks like Google has made a SNS which provides an interface for all its products and at the same time makes people more dependent on its services.