My thoughts about Google+ after a month of usage- Google+ review

I think this is a time to give my views on Google+ after about a month of its regular usage. Google+ is really a very ambitious project of Google and one from which Google has high expectations especially after Google Buzz and Google Wave failure. Google engineers worked in total secrecy denying any leak of it as a far fetched rumor. The service and interface is too good but will it be successful is a totally different aspect.

It basic paradigm difference between Facebook-Twitter and Google+ is centred on privacy. It is designed to imitate in the complex structures of everyday life unlike the global broadcast system of Facebook and Twitter. Google+ experience is centred on the Circles feature which tries to imitate the complex structures of life and groups your different contacts according to your relations with the persona. You can make unlimited Circles naming them whatever you want and add single people to multiple Circles and the best thing that the people you add to the Circles and any other person cannot know in which Circle you have added someone though the one who is added will get a notifications that he has been added in a Circle by you.

Even public sharing is highly controlled where you can decide whether to allows comments or not, limit its sharing any time if you change your mind and some more moderating options.

Overall the interface has been very well designed, is attractive and very strong social offering from Google. Here are my notes which I have prepared during these days.

1. Circles are the feature on which Google has based the Google+ service. Call it lists or groups but don't do the mistake of comparing it to the Facebook groups. You drag your contacts into one of the Circles and the person is added to it. The interface is fun to use with interesting animations (try deleting a Circle or grabbing multiple contacts) and if you needed any fast manual feature to organize your contacts then this is it. Groups are sort of soul of social networks which was until sometime back missing from online social networking scene. Group creating on Facebook is too public yet suffocated and Twitter has still failed to explore this option properly.
   
2. Even out of the Circles interface when you hover the mouse over any username their appears an option to add the person to a Circle. It's sad that unlike Facebook there is no automatic option to suggest you contacts to add to a common Circle but that maybe to ward off privacy concerns like in the Face recognition system.
   
3. Photo sharing is one click and is available for Android and Apple smartphones and tablets through apps that can be easily downloaded for free from Market place and iTunes respectively. On the computer too photo uploading is simply drag and drop which will fill in the address of the image and you will just need to click on the upload button.
   
4. Photo viewing is not anything special but efficient enough for normal usage.
   
5. The mobile web app of Google+ on Apple iOS as well as on Android is very good although I faced some problem in moderating the comments on my posts through my Android smartphone.
   
6. You can check into locations using the mobile Google+ app although there is not much here to interest you and the interface too is in typical Google style unlike the recent chic design of plus.
   
7. Notifications and comment thread is now located on the right top side of plus as well as on other Google services. It is ever present and keeps you constantly connected and ready to share.
   
8. Sparks feature which is an interest based search engine has still not been improved from a month since its launch although with Google reader having such a good interest based search capability this is expected to improve soon.