Google+: Getting Facebook's Silent Cousin to Speak Up

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

Monday night was pretty weird…

Somebody made a pretty innocent post over in the Fly Fishing Blogger group I participate in on Facebook.  It was one of those “Read this article, it says Facebook is evil, they’re stealing your identity” type of posts.

Well then Chris Hunt (of TU fame and Eat More Brook Trout infamy) made a point, followed by a little joke about moving to Google+.

If you’re not familiar with Google+, it’s sort of like Facebook, and sort of like Twitter, except much quieter.  For whatever the reason, conversations don’t seem to flow as easy over there, and as such people try it for a while, and then leave.  Myself included, guilty as charged.
So I thought it might be fun to basically SPAM anybody that has anything to do with fishing in my unused Google+ Circles (think Friends on Facebook) and ask them why they don’t use Google + and what might entice them to use it more.

While I honestly didn’t expect much of a response, I was shocked to see the turnout.
The takeaways?  People said they don’t care for Google+ because:

1) It’s too quiet
2) There are too many social networks to manage
3) Closed API (restricts sharing across social networks)
4) “All my friends & family are on Facebook”
5) All Social Networks are evil, what difference does it make
6) Too many people put them in Circles that they’ve never heard of before

(BTW, not sure how #6 isn’t the same as what goes on at Facebook…).

But they also said they would be interested in:

1) Using Hangouts (Video Chat) for things like fly tying
2) Getting a better grasp on the features/functionality
3) Moving to G+ if other people moved too

With that noted, most of those same people that commented continued to interact within Google+ throughout the day yesterday (Tuesday), posting stuff, creating new Communities (think Groups on Facebook), etc, etc…  Seems like there’s interest to “kick the tires,” for more than a few, if nothing else.

Want in?  I can send you an invite…

What does it all mean?  Beats me, but I think at minimum I’ll give Google+ a solid 30 days of legit use to see if it gains any traction with me.

See you there?

Find me here, I’m sorta using both identities…
Michael Agneta on Google +
Troutrageous! on Google+

Published

9 thoughts on “Google+: Getting Facebook's Silent Cousin to Speak Up”

  7. I took an early invite to G+ and have been happy with its interface but underwhelmed with its utility to “do what I want,” which is to reach more people who do not necessarily have an identical blog of their own.Unfortunately what I found is that the people connecting to me on G+ were assembled as follows: folks with their own blogs (about 60%), professional photographers looking to sell photography (about 30%), friends and family (5%), and random extremely crazy left-and-right wing nuts with no apparent connection to me, about 5%. I used it fairly heavily for about two months and just didn't feel like I was building anything. If anything, it feels like a reboot of the “fishing forum” days. But that's just me. I converted my blogger page to Google recently and now my posts automatically post to G+, we'll see if that generates anything interesting.

    Reply

  8. Would love to join in the fun, Mike. I tried to post this comment from the iPhone using the G+ app, but google kindly erased it upon hitting the publish button. Google does not play nice with mobile Apple devices, although most of the Google apps for the iPhone have a great paint job.

    Reply

  9. I've used G+ for quite a long time and sometimes have conversations on it, like twitter I hook up with fellow anglers on G+, thing is none of my friends or family use it so to keep up with them I still need FB (which I hate). I've rage quite FB a few times and I really don't like it, I never have but needs must, it seems that all my friends only communicate now on FB, they barely even send txt msg or make phone calls these days.I'll see you guys on G+

    Reply

Leave a Reply