Social Monkey

Google+ (also known as Google plus and Google circles) is Google’s most recent offering to the social media market.

It is currently only available to those who have an invitation (mostly social media geeks) as a field test. It, apparently, has lots of bugs at the moment that the developers are constantly working on to iron out before it goes ‘live’.

From what we can tell it is similar to Facebook but allows the user to create ‘circles’ of friends so that certain updates only go to certain people you are connected with. E.g. you could have a ‘friends’ circle, a ‘family’ circle and a ‘work colleagues’ circle. I can see this being a popular function as it allows more censoring when doing status updates – so as not to offend Auntie Jean! It also has the ability to jump into an instant online video chat room with selected contacts.

As with all new social media platforms Google+’s success will not happen overnight and will be totally reliant on people signing up to it – any social network is only as good as its users.

I can see that this time Google may have created a platform that has functionality that individuals will find user friendly and more socially advanced than Facebook.

Currently it does not strike as a platform that will work particularly well for business, although time will tell, and I do not think it is in any danger of knocking Twitter off of its perch.

So, in conclusion, one to watch but not to worry about jumping on board with just yet.

Some very good related articles:

Mack Collier (Social Media Expert)

Miami Herald