@ mcai8sh4:

Hey, I was about to send you an invite, but then I realized I already have you in my circles. :)

@ Tormod Haugen:

That’s actually an interesting idea. Facebook is primarily a welled garden and my instinct is to always lock it down and keep it private and use it mostly for sharing stuff with friends and family. Twitter is always public. Google+ could be something in between. :)

@ copperfish:

I know. It is quite scary to think how much information they will be able to mine out of this network.

@ Gothmog:

I have to check out Hangouts. That’s one thing I have not touched yet because video chat is not something I use often. :P

@ Liudvikas:

I’m here. I hope Google will let us mere mortals make custom URL’s soon.

@ Gothmog:

You know, Hangouts could be a really good for pen and paper role playing too.

@ jambarama:

Yes, avoiding the “Why don’t you add me on Facebook? Are we not friends?” awkwardness was a stroke of genius.

@ Liudvikas:

Heh! My Gravatar is probably like 4-5 years old if not older. I just never bothered changing it. The Google+ pic was taken last summer at my cousin’s wedding.

@ Eric:

It uses Google chat. It’s on left sidebar. Disabled by default but you can sign in at any time. You can also limit your visibility to specific circles only.

@ Simon:

I think I have seen a third party app that does exactly that posted on Reddit the other day. I wouldn’t necessarily trust it but it’s out there.

I’m not sure if Google is in position to do it themselves. It would be a very aggressive competitive move I’m sure Facebook would want to block it.

@ icebrain:

Huh, I did not know that. I never used Facebook data download thing. I simply noticed it was there. Google+ actually offers you several options, formats and lets you export your social graph very easily.

@ Alphast:

It’s actually picking up. I see more and more people jumping in, checking it out and adding me.

Getting an invite took a while and actually getting the system to work took even more. But once in, it is pretty nice. Visually it is a lot better than Facebook, but of course, the crowd aspect is still very limited.

@ Eric:
Also you can share your post with a specific person that way they get notification about that post.

Google has been building data liberation into their services for a while now, and Facebook added this feature in October of last year.

Well, not exactly. The fact that FB doesn’t let you export your contacts’ email addresses and actively blocks extensions that let you do that shows that they aren’t really committed to the users’ rights about their data. It was a kludge to shut critics up.

With Google Contacts (I don’t have a G+ account), I can export everything and even sync to any system using the API.

I think it would really help people migrate to G+ if they created a facebook circle and used the fb api to get and put facebook posts. Then people who wanted to make the shift could move without losing their fb network.

@ Eric:
G+ uses googletalk as its chat service, Eric. It shows up on the left hand side on my google+ page. It’s limited to circles as well- another slick feature! That way I can only chat with those I truly care to.

I’m at the moment missing a simple textchat/message system in Google+ maybe I have not found it yet, maybe it does not exist the way I expect it to be…

@ Gothmog:
Oh really, didn’t recognize him with his suit, looking all fancy, unlike his avatar on the blog with his face closeup :D

Also, and I may be alone in this, I like buzz. Since you can link it to articles you shared in google reader, it is really convenient for me to share an article with friends/family, and add a quick comment. They bungled the privacy bits, but I think it serves a useful purpose.

For example, I see these posts in buzz!

I’m on it, and there are 3 things I like about it. So far the biggest draw to me is that unlike facebook, it hasn’t been overrun with “look at me” or “I had a bad day” type posts yet. Circles, as you mentioned – being able to control who sees your post – by circle, individually, or public is genius.

Second, you don’t have to “friend” someone back. If they want to include you in their circle they can, and you don’t have to add them to yours, or you add them to a “I hardly know you” circle. No feeling guilty over not friending your grandma.

Third, the hangout (chatroom with voice and/or video), chat (1 on 1 chat), and huddle (a bunch of people can see a text & everyone can see each other’s messages) features are handy, especially if you have an android phone.

I’d really like it if you could filter incoming messages as well – like gmail filters – but it is early.