{"id":315,"date":"2011-08-03T15:39:50","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T05:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/?p=315"},"modified":"2011-08-03T15:39:50","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T05:39:50","slug":"google-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/?p=315","title":{"rendered":"Google+ First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

As anyone who hasn’t spent the last month living in a cave on top of the Himalayas will know, Google has made its entrance into the social networking fray with Google+. \u00c2\u00a0I was very keen to start using it but it’s still invitation-only so I had to wait a bit until the network reached me. It finally has, I’m playing with it a lot, and I thought I’d record a few thoughts.<\/p>\n

\"Spiderweb\"<\/a>
A symbol for social networking?\u00c2 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I already have a Facebook profile, do I need another “social network”? Well, not really. But I’m very much inclined to prefer Google+ over Facebook; certainly I have somewhat more confidence that Google can handle data security. Google+ has easy-to-configure privacy controls, and \u00c2\u00a0some built-in features that I’m keen to use, such as the concept of a circle as an easy way to limit posts to a subset of your online friends. (I know it is possible to separate friends on Facebook into subcategories but the hassle…) Nor do Google+ relationships have to be bidirectional: You can add people to your circles (“follow” them) without them putting you into one of their circles. That way, you can only see their public posts.\u00c2\u00a0Also, Google+ isn’t full of third-party applications that may or may not be secure as far as protection of my data is concerned (which is why I don’t use a single application on Facebook), nor does it clutter my page with annoying adverts (so far).<\/p>\n

So, as soon as I got invited I set up a very minimalist Google+ profile and started playing with it.. There is a little bit more of a learning curve than for Facebook but the basics are very similar: Add people you know to your circles, share status updates \/ photos etc with any appropriate circle, or make them available to everyone. \u00c2\u00a0If your friends don’t yet have a Google+ account you can send them an invite. While they’re “not yet” on Google+, you can still share with them via email, the instructions helpfully state. I hesitated at that point. Surely if I send someone an invite, and they don’t accept it because they don’t want a Google+ account, is it not rather annoying for them to get my posts anyway in their email? I really didn’t like that option but the first time I posted something to a circle that included email-only contacts it asked me if I wanted to share by email, I clicked “no”, and this option became the default. I appreciate how the last post’s settings become the default for the next one; it’s a nice touch.<\/p>\n

Facebook-like minimal functionality thus established I started to look further. As I learn more about photography I find I like to share some of my photographs with a wider audience. Hence this blog, for example. Then I stumbled on this article:\u00c2\u00a0Google+: The Survival Guide for a Photographer’s Paradise<\/a>, which I found an excellent introduction to the basics of Google+ even for non-photographers. The post explains every menu item, button and display area, and goes into some detail about circle creation and settings. It also pointed me to the Scrapbook album, which I might not have found on my own. It can be set up so that it shows five photographs on your profile page, and you can even choose which ones. I like this functionality a lot.<\/p>\n

Of course I’ve still barely scratched the surface, for example, I haven’t been in a Huddle or Hangout yet. But so far I like Google+ a whole lot more than Facebook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As anyone who hasn’t spent the last month living in a cave on top of the Himalayas will know, Google has made its entrance into the social networking fray with Google+. \u00c2\u00a0I was very keen to start using it but it’s still invitation-only so I had to wait a bit until the network reached me. … Continue reading Google+ First Impressions<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scribbles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fractalthoughts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}