Anyone want a Google+ invite?

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by divisionten

I'm in. It's so weird not seeing everyone's icons, though.

Weird, I can't seem to find your profile. I know your name, I know your email address, but somehow you're an unknowable blank spot in the internet.

[divisionten]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

Weird, I can't seem to find your profile. I know your name, I know your email address, but somehow you're an unknowable blank spot in the internet.

Already friended you. My icon is a picture of me hugging an unfinished turret.

[Rather Dashing]

Ah! Either you hadn't when I checked(after you posted that) or I just got the notification. Welcome to my Friends circle!

[Johro]

The notifications seem to be slow...well for me anyway. I'd see people saying I've been added...then nothing. Eventually the note would appear and even then they wouldn't appear in my own list to add to circles. I had to go to their own pages to do them each manually. One that I didn't, did eventually show up in the circles adding list thing though...so everything just seems to be slow.

[Comrade Pants]

Slow notifications confirmed.

[Alcoremortis]

Yeah, it took a few days for me to be able to locate/talk to one of my friends on there. I suspect that this will get better over time. After all, this IS what a beta is there for!

[puzzlebox]

Can anyone give me a rundown of why (or even if) Google+ is better than Facebook?

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by puzzlebox

Can anyone give me a rundown of why (or even if) Google+ is better than Facebook?

No Zynga games.

[puzzlebox]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

No Zynga games.

Haha, oh my goodness yes. The "hide all from this app" button gets a lot of use from me.

[GuruGuru214]

Also, the circles feature behaves a lot like your friends, but you apparently have a lot more control over who sees what. It lets you compartmentalize a lot. The lack of this feature anywhere else is one of the major reasons I've been so against social networking.

Oh, and Dashing says that there's free video conference calling, so that's awesome.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

Oh, and Dashing says that there's free video conference calling, so that's awesome.

I have yet to partake of this particular feature as I have only video called with two people and attempting to do so now would officially classify me as a "third wheel".

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by puzzlebox

Can anyone give me a rundown of why (or even if) Google+ is better than Facebook?

First, watch this. It's a demo video about "settings", but it's entirely painless and shows a lot of the huge benefits out the gate(easy to define who sees what in a lot of areas, easy to SEE who sees what, easy to leave, you can export everything you have stored on the network before you go). Now, to go more in-depth, I'll do a rundown of features in order of how cool/useful I think they are:

Circles
Demo Video

This is the main feature of Google+, and it really defines the experience. Facebook has a similar feature, where you can choose to share with certain defined "Groups" of friends, but the experience there is nowhere NEAR as integrated. Every time you add a contact, you HAVE to add them to at least one Circle. You can use pre-set Circles, or delete the three pre-sets and define your own. This allows for a lot of variance and control over who sees what. You can also put people in multiple Circles extremely easily, and it's just a very pleasant experience to have your internet contacts defined in a way that at least somewhat emulates how you see them socially in the "real word". Friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, people who are related to this particular hobby of yours, people who are a part your wacky deviant sex fetish double life, etc. Everything you do is defined by Circles. Don't want to chat with everyone? You can define who you want to use Google Chat with using Circles. Your Stream is also defined by Circles too, so if you just want to look at updates from friends or family, you can jump to that Circle. For example, my mother was recently looking for photos on Facebook of my my new triplet first cousins once removed. If everything had happened on Google+, she could have jumped over to the Family circle to reduce the load of jumping between various family members' feeds to see if they added anything.

Hangouts
Demo Video

Hangouts are just an excellent idea altogether, and extremely well designed. Opening a hangout is really an extension of Chat, it says "I'm available and want to have a conversation in a way that just being "Online" doesn't in social network terms. You can define by circles, or select a specific person or people from your contacts list. It's very much like a VoIP client(e.g: Skype) in that way, except you have a lot more control over who sees you as "Online" at each start-up. It also has some cool features, including the aforementioned free group video conferencing and simultaneous, synced YouTube watching(with webcam feeds under the video if you want, and a push to talk button under the video).

Instant Upload
(The video for this is dumb and doesn't talk about the feature at all, and instead goes for goopy emotional crap about memories. Fuck that!)

The Google+ Android app(and soon iPhone app) can automatically upload the pictures you take to a private album on Google+. It asks you if you want it to do this when you first start it up, and from that point on, if you take a picture it is on your album on Google+. You can delete, share, and otherwise manage all of your photos from Google+'s website or app without having to move the pictures over with a cable or manually syncing. It's a set and forget option. So, say, if your phone is compromised somewhere between, oh, the death of your dog and the last pictures you took of said dead dog, there's a certain value in having those pictures stored somewhere. It's a picture upload and backup feature that requires no fuss, which I personally like.

Sparks
Demo Video

Sparks is a very interesting feature to me. It's very much like an automated RSS feed reader, where rather than putting in specific feed links into a reader and then watching a set of particular sites, you put in INTERESTS and Google pulls up stories based on things you're interested in("From designer fashion to the latest comic books", the demo video says). The point here is to give you a lot of content that you can share with people on Google+, but obviously it also acts as an interesting new way to look through news.

+1
-Demo Video

An interesting content recommendation feature. Essentially, in Google Searches(and certain websites, ostensibly the button is coming to more places), you can "+1" content that you might not potentially share, but that perhaps when someone is looking for it anyway they may see your recommendation and take some value from it.

There are a few other features, but I either don't personally find them all that interesting or, in the case of Huddles, it's just not quite there yet.

[Comrade Pants]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

First, watch this. It's a demo video about "settings", but it's entirely painless and shows a lot of the huge benefits out the gate(easy to define who sees what in a lot of areas, easy to SEE who sees what, easy to leave, you can export everything you have stored on the network before you go). Now, to go more in-depth, I'll do a rundown of features in order of how cool/useful I think they are:

Circles
Demo Video

This is the main feature of Google+, and it really defines the experience. Facebook has a similar feature, where you can choose to share with certain defined "Groups" of friends, but the experience there is nowhere NEAR as integrated. Every time you add a contact, you HAVE to add them to at least one Circle. You can use pre-set Circles, or delete the three pre-sets and define your own. This allows for a lot of variance and control over who sees what. You can also put people in multiple Circles extremely easily, and it's just a very pleasant experience to have your internet contacts defined in a way that at least somewhat emulates how you see them socially in the "real word". Friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, people who are related to this particular hobby of yours, people who are a part your wacky deviant sex fetish double life, etc. Everything you do is defined by Circles. Don't want to chat with everyone? You can define who you want to use Google Chat with using Circles. Your Stream is also defined by Circles too, so if you just want to look at updates from friends or family, you can jump to that Circle. For example, my mother was recently looking for photos on Facebook of my my new triplet first cousins once removed. If everything had happened on Google+, she could have jumped over to the Family circle to reduce the load of jumping between various family members' feeds to see if they added anything.

Hangouts
Demo Video

Hangouts are just an excellent idea altogether, and extremely well designed. Opening a hangout is really an extension of Chat, it says "I'm available and want to have a conversation in a way that just being "Online" doesn't in social network terms. You can define by circles, or select a specific person or people from your contacts list. It's very much like a VoIP client(e.g: Skype) in that way, except you have a lot more control over who sees you as "Online" at each start-up. It also has some cool features, including the aforementioned free group video conferencing and simultaneous, synced YouTube watching(with webcam feeds under the video if you want, and a push to talk button under the video).

Instant Upload
(The video for this is dumb and doesn't talk about the feature at all, and instead goes for goopy emotional crap about memories. Fuck that!)

The Google+ Android app(and soon iPhone app) can automatically upload the pictures you take to a private album on Google+. It asks you if you want it to do this when you first start it up, and from that point on, if you take a picture it is on your album on Google+. You can delete, share, and otherwise manage all of your photos from Google+'s website or app without having to move the pictures over with a cable or manually syncing. It's a set and forget option. So, say, if your phone is compromised somewhere between, oh, the death of your dog and the last pictures you took of said dead dog, there's a certain value in having those pictures stored somewhere. It's a picture upload and backup feature that requires no fuss, which I personally like.

Sparks
Demo Video

Sparks is a very interesting feature to me. It's very much like an automated RSS feed reader, where rather than putting in specific feed links into a reader and then watching a set of particular sites, you put in INTERESTS and Google pulls up stories based on things you're interested in("From designer fashion to the latest comic books", the demo video says). The point here is to give you a lot of content that you can share with people on Google+, but obviously it also acts as an interesting new way to look through news.

+1
-Demo Video

An interesting content recommendation feature. Essentially, in Google Searches(and certain websites, ostensibly the button is coming to more places), you can "+1" content that you might not potentially share, but that perhaps when someone is looking for it anyway they may see your recommendation and take some value from it.

There are a few other features, but I either don't personally find them all that interesting or, in the case of Huddles, it's just not quite there yet.

LISTEN TO THIS MAN. Aside from being a cheerleader for le Google, he really knows what he's talking about.

[corruptbiggins]

I'll probably get on the Google+ about a year or two after everyone else and then hardly ever use the thing, just like Facebook and a little like Twitter. Oh and MySpace.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by corruptbiggins

I'll probably get on the Google+ about a year or two after everyone else and then hardly ever use the thing, just like Facebook and a little like Twitter. Oh and MySpace.

You should get it now when it's a hangout for the cool kids instead of when it turns into the popular thing to do and every two bit advertising service and casual game dealer sinks their hooks into it forcing us to all convert to Yahoo!...

I guess I'm a cynic...

[TomPravetz]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

You should get it now when it's a hangout for the cool kids instead of when it turns into the popular thing to do and every two bit advertising service and casual game dealer sinks their hooks into it forcing us to all convert to Yahoo!...

I guess I'm a cynic...

Yahoo!?! *shivers*

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by TomPravetz

Yahoo!?! *shivers*

Repent! For the time of Judgement is at hand!

[TomPravetz]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

Repent! For the time of Judgement is at hand!

Yahoo! has only one use... Telling me who fell from the stands at baseball games.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by TomPravetz

Yahoo! has only one use... Telling me who fell from the stands at baseball games.

I still have my old Yahoo! mail accounts, back from when gmail was blocked at the school computers...those were the days of censorship to the extreme.

They also blocked myspace and facebook.

[corruptbiggins]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

You should get it now when it's a hangout for the cool kids instead of when it turns into the popular thing to do and every two bit advertising service and casual game dealer sinks their hooks into it forcing us to all convert to Yahoo!...

I guess I'm a cynic...

Hell, why not. If anyone wants to (or even can) you can send me an invite at my user name @gmail.com (I'm sure someone can work that out, never like typing out my full e-mail address publicly as I get enough spam as it is even though I don't use my gmail account for much of anything anyway).