Who Uses Google Plus?

Jon Mitchel, over at ReadWriteWeb, has reported the results of a stuy about the first 10 million Google Plus adopters (see Who Uses Google Plus Now? Yep, Male Students & Geeks From the US). Big surprise, it turns out that the users were mostly young American men working in technology. About 70% of Google Plus users still identify as men, and the bulk of them are American. The major shift from prior studies was that students have overwhelmingly displaced tech workers. I would say that it is too early to put much validity behind the study. I remember the early days of the Web back in the mid 90s when the average user of the Internet was a young white techie living in Northern California. It took some time, but the demographics of Internet users (in the U.S.) today is pretty much the demographics of the people in the United States.

I continue to believe that Google+ has developed a superior social networking alternative to Facebook. Facebook clearly got the wakeup call and has made improvements in their approach to privacy settings, but G+ is much more intuitive. I don’t even think of “settings”. If I write something that I want to share with my family members, I just post it to the family circle and that is it. I don’t have to think about privacy settings. I have a friends circle too, and only I know exactly who is in it. I just click on any one of my 15 circles and I can see who is in it. Any of the 215 people who are in one of my circles can see that they are in one of my circles, but they don’t know which circle or circles. A person could be in my “Never ever want to run into these persons again as long as I live” circle. Meanwhile 169 people have put me in one or more of their circles. There are a number of these 169 people that I have never heard of before. Some of them have thousands of people in their circles. Why they want me in one of their circles I don’t know, but I don’t care either. If I post something public, anybody and everybody can read it. If I post to my motorcycles circle, only my fellow biker buddies can read it. It is all very logical and intuitive.

The next turn of the crank for G+, in my opinion, is for them to become integrated with the various blogging and social media tools. Like millions of others, I use WordPress to write my postings. I have a plugin for WP that automatically adds my posting to Facebook and Twitter. I have not yet found one to do the same for G+, but I am certain there will be one soon, if there is not one already that I have overlooked. Tools like ShareThis provide the icons to allow readers to share something they read with others through email and various social networks. G+ will surely become part of tools such as this. I expect that G+ will become at least as ubiquitous as Facebook, but more private at the same time. I have just added a G+ button on my blog so that anyone wishing to put me in one or more of their circles (and I won’t know which). The link to do this uses my Google+ ID which is the string of numbers in the following. Cleck the link and you can add to your circles.

https://plus.google.com/112262067079518502679/

Tags: circles, google, google plus, social media

Google Plus Nearby

A  posting on the way about what Jon Mitchel, over at ReadWriteWeb, had to say about the results of a study examining the first 10 million Google Plus adopters. More on that later. For now, I wanted to share a thought about Google Plus “nearby”. As we all know, Google Plus has circles wherein we can define our friends, biker buddies, soccer moms, left or right thinking cohorts, etc. Another “virtual” circle that you don’t have to create is the “nearby” circle. That circle includes anybody who is in the geographic vicinity of where you are. Thanks to GPS and triangulation technology, it is not hard to determine where people are — if they agree to allow their location to be used. In times like today–hurricane Irene–that can be very helpful. You can post something or read something from  “Nearby” and it will likely be neighbors or at some point first responders and government leaders. Does anyone have electricity and spare freezer capacity? Is there passage at the Nod Road and Whipstick Road intersection yet? Anyone know where to get some D-cell batteries? If you are heading out of town, don’t take route X because it is closed. In more normal times, “nearby” postings may highlight good restaurants, plays, and local activities. There are other “channels” of communication including Twitter, Facebook, SMS, email, blogs, etc. but I see G+ as a convenient private (to the degree you want) approach to local communication. Oh, you can still call people on your cell phone too.

Tags: circles, google plus, nearby

Google Plus on iPad

The Google Plus app on the iPhone is very nice but there is not yet a native app for the iPad. There will be one soon, I am sure, but if you are like me and can’t wait, there is a way you can adapt the iPhone app to enable it to work on the iPad. It requires some steps but there is a tutorial on how to do it that I found in one of the tech blogs. You can find it here. I found some variations from the steps outlined, and it took awhile to figure it out. If you try it and have problems, let me know and I will be glad to help.

Meanwhile, Google Plus seems to be growing rapidly. Since my last report, I now have 189 people in my various circles and 145 people have me in their circles. As I mused at the last wriing, where does this lead? Everybody connected to everybody? I am not sure how many people will end up in my circles, but I will try to keep it meaningful. The 189 people are people I know, serve on boards with, have worked with, spoken with, or met at a conference. Many of the 145 people who have added me to their circles are people I have never heard of. I get emails every day from Google + with a picture of a person and notice that John Doe has added me to one or more of his circles. I look at the picture and am certain I have never seen this person in my life.

The people in your circles are visible to anyone who looks at your profile, but what circle or circles you have them in is not visible. I have noticed that some of the people who have added me to their circle have thousands of people in their circles. One was just short of 10,000. I don’t how many people I know, but it is not 10,000. I would call those “connections” not meaningful. Perhaps some people are looking for bragging rights–I have 10,000 people in my circles! Wow, how many people have you in their circle? Um, there is my mother and, and, um, thousands of others that I can’t recall right now.

So it looks like there will be a lot of people who will feel good at having thousands of people in their circles. So be it. What is more important is the meaningful circles, like your family circle, your bike club circle, your XYZ Corporation Board circle, etc. Those are circles you can really communicate with and know that only the members that you have elected to put in those circles will see what you post. You may still choose to post things for the public to read, like this story, but many of day to day postings will be much more private. That is what Facebook has not facilitated very well. You can segment things on FB, but it is not easy. Google has made it trivial. I continue to believe they are going to get a lot of converts.

One more thing. There is a transient circle called “Nearby”. If you allow Google to detect where you are, you can look at postings from “Nearby”. The posters are people, you may or may not know, who are “nearby” who are posting about the great meal they had at XYZ  Cafe or something about traffic flow, or whatever. This is fun to browse through just to see what people are talking about nearby. I like using the iPad to browse through Google + postings. I don’t spend all day at it–maybe 15 minutes. You can browse my all of your circles, look at the postings in just your family circle, or the board circle, or by those who happen to be nearby.

Tags: circle, circles, google, google plus, ipad, nearby