Venturing Into The Plus
I want to root against Google+ so badly I can almost taste it. A failure here would make my life so much easier! This isn’t like Google Wave where I saw something that could potentially be useful, helpful and game-changing for how I could communicate with people. This is just more of the same stuff we already have.
Google+ is just sharing things with a mixture of friends, acquaintances and strangers. That’s it. Just sharing and following. The content isn’t any different than I can get from these people anywhere else; it’s the same kitty video I see on Facebook, now with a whiter background design.
So, I want to root against this new, redundant time suck. I don’t need it and I certainly don’t need more social networks to keep tabs on.
That said, I am now on Google+.
It’s research only, I swear! Strangely addicting research…but anyway, the point is that I am on Google+ despite my desire to watch it fail. I still hope it amounts to nothing, but in the mean time, I might as well check out what these circles are all about, and spruce up my profile, and well…I have to come clean. I’m hooked.
Maybe we are now hardwired to enjoy novelty in any form, but every time I sign on to Google+ it feels like getting into a new car. All I want to do is take it for a spin and see what kind of power it has. I am enjoying every bit of minutiae, every second of exploration. I mean, not that I still don’t want it to fail and all, but it is kind of fun.
I went to one of the first colleges to get Facebook, and in the early years, it had a similar feel. Simple acts of navigation were novel and everything had a weird lawless and vaguely stalkerish feel about it.
It’s this fun with form (a new system to navigate!) and function (new people to stalk!) that Google+ has going for it. I don’t think we need Google+ at all, and I still wish it would go away, but I’m pretty sure I like it, against my better judgement. As Facebook would say, “it’s complicated.”
- Jason Oberholtzer
