What Is the Difference between Google+ and Other Social Networks?

Chances are that you’re already using Facebook and probably Twitter as well. Most social networking–savvy people are also integrating FourSquare, LinkedIn, Delicious, Reddit, and a fairly vast array of other social networking services into their lives.

So why would you want another social service? Well, for starters, Google+ has so many cool features you’d be crazy not to check it out. And even though it’s similar to Facebook in many ways (see Figure 1-1), Google+ is already proving to be far more capable than Facebook when it comes to reaching the right people and more powerful than Twitter for keeping up with breaking news.

One of the really neat things about Google+ is the feature Circles, which enables you to organize your friends into handy groups: the defaults are Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following. It’s also possible to create your own groups, such as one for a local club. You can then choose to share information with specific Circles of people or share it publicly with everybody. You can learn more about setting up and managing Circles in Chapter 5.

Google is on to something with Circles. Facebook considers all friends to be equal, whereas most human relationships are a bit more complicated. Since my nieces and nephews (not to mention my grandma) joined Facebook, I’ve had to be pretty careful about the sort of things I post. With Circles I can let loose with my friends, but keep it pretty clean-cut for the family.

Another really great feature with Google+ is public sharing and following. As on Twitter, on Google+ you can choose to follow people you don’t know personally and see the things they share publicly. Like Twitter, Google+ doesn’t require you to get approval to follow a person’s public feed, so it’s a great way to integrate your personal life with those of famous people you may want to keep tabs on.