When Google+ was announced, I was mildly disappointed to see Google limit the number of participants in Google+ when seemingly everything else they launch is in Beta for a long while. Perhaps Google Wave's lack of buzz on launch made them change their tactics. There certainly has been a fair amount of buzz around Google+, particularly around how people couldn't get it.
Since the dawn of recorded history and anthologies, over and over again we see that the best way to produce desire in people is to tell them they can't have it. It's the basis for the "fall of humankind" in the Garden of Eden account in the bible and is repeated over, and over, and over again in holy books, myths, stories, and current news articles. (Aside: I heard a speaker say that a whole lot of trouble could have been avoided if instead of telling Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit on the tree in the garden, God should have told them not to eat the snake.)
So anyway, consider me interested in seeing what Google+ was offering. How was it going to be a game changer?
I was actually excited when I received an invite from a friend last evening. I immediately went to the Google+ site, and lo and behold, it let me in!
My first impression?
Now I truly understand what my 16 year old means when asked a question and he replies - "Meh".
There wasn't much there that I would call a game changer. Everything I found that I could do in Google+, I was doing through other tools, without the feeling that everything I entered about myself now became part of the Google empires vast bank of knowledge about humankind, and would be used to target me for advertising.
Now I know that other sites collect information... I just don't get the same creepy feeling that I did in filling out my Google+ profile.
So, I will give it a resounding "Meh" for now, but poke around it some more and give it a chance, without entering any personal information.
How about you? Are you a Google+ user? What were your impressions?
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