Do you use Google+ more than Facebook? Are you an avid Twitter user, but not so active on Google+? Do you auto-share online media, such as songs or news articles, onto Facebook? These are just some of the questions being asked in the ongoing evolution of the "Interest Graph," succinctly defined by software engineer Adam Rifkin as "WHAT people care about." He was contrasting it to the term popularized by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "Social Graph," which is WHO people care about. As I've watched the Interest Graph evolve over the past year, what's struck me the most is that it has forced people to make a choice. I'm willing to wager that most of you have chosen one platform as your primary means to track and express what you care about.

So what did the designers at Google actually do not just to make their product so much more beautiful, but so much more beautiful than Facebook? Co.Design talked to Google+ lead designer Fred Gilbert to unpack the subtle brilliance behind their awesome redesign--a redesign that was completed in less than two months--and his notes are full of lessons that could hone the experience of almost any product.

The Google+ Badge allows you to connect your website to your Google+ page or your personal profile on Google+. Adding the badge to your website helps you connect with friends, fans, and customers. Since Google+ pages and profiles are different, we offer two slightly different versions of the badge: one for each case. Badges that link to Google+ profiles allow people to easily find you on Google+ and add you to a circle directly from your website. Badges that link to Google+ pages include these features and add some additional functionality. They help Google consolidate +1's from your website and your Google+ page, and make your website eligible for Google+ Direct Connect.

"Google+ to RSS" ist NOT affiliated with or distributed by Google.
This service is simply solving the issue that there is no official RSS-Feed to Google+-profiles.

while we're moving from connecting people to information to connecting people to people .... social is also about noise-signal filtering, in our information environment. Social circles can add value only if we power them with our time and passion (since humans give back only on certain circumstances, while search engines give “one shot auto-learning fast answers”).

Logischerweise bevorzugt Google seinen eigenen Chrome-Browser, daher überrascht es nicht, dass es dafür die meisten Google+-Plug-Ins gibt. Die wichtigsten haben wir für sie – alphabetisch geordnet – zusammengestellt.

Menschen mit gleichen Interessen finden – und sich vernetzen
Google+ eignet sich wie kein anderes Netzwerk anderer Internet-Dienst, Menschen mit bestimmten Interessen zu finden – und sich dann mit ihnen zu vernetzen. Google+ ist im Gegensatz zu Facebook nicht geschlossen. Okay, Facebook hat sich geöffnet, man kann jetzt auch andere “abonnieren” anstatt sich mit ihnen zu “befreunden”. Aber dafür ist Facebook nicht gebaut. Google schon. Hier spielt Google seine unglaubliche Stärke bei der Suche aus. Und so ist Google+ zuvorderst vielleicht kein “Social Network”, aber bereits jetzt eine enorm leistungsstarke “Social Search”. Und je mehr User bei Google+ sind, desto stärker wird sie. Und was kann man denn besseres mit den gefundenen Menschen machen, bei denen man ein gemeinsames Interesse entdeckt hat, als sich mit ihnen zu vernetzen? Das Schöne an Google+: Man kann sich vernetzen (auch gegenseitig, wenn man sich gegenseitig circled), man muss es aber nicht, man kann auch nur einem anderen “folgen”.

guter Kommentar:

"Als ich mich zum ersten Mal mit G+ beschäftigte, bin ich mit dem Vorsatz daran gegangen, das es sich hier nicht um Facebook handelt, also hab ich auch erwartet, dass einiges anders ist als bei FB. Als problematisch hatte ich das jedoch niemals empfunden, es hat auch nicht lange gedauert, bis ich kapiert habe, wie's läuft. Allerdings kann ich mir recht gut vorstellen, dass ein Großteil der FB-Klientel Probleme damit hat, mal etwas anders zu machen als "wie ich das schon immer gemacht habe". Vielleicht gar nicht mal so schlecht, wenn dieser Teil der FB-User bleibt, wo er ist, sonst haben wir hier auch möglicherweise bald dieses "Du, ich sitz gerade auffem Klo, was machst Du denn jetzt?" – Niveau."

Ein gemeinschaftliches Dokument
(oder wie 120+ Menschen ein Buch gleichzeitig schrieben)

Taken from the point of view of these 3 motivators for intellectual activity, Google+ is a platform that allows you to use all of them in the most complete and holistic way.  I have read about many people that were not actively blogging or creating content before G+, and for which this platform has opened the doors of collective creation.

What has been your experience when creating content for G+? Do you consider that the factors delineated above are in-line with your motivations for posting?

This is why I was never fascinated by Google+ and its concept of Circles. You have to go through entire sub-communities of your friends and drop them into arbitrary groupings. That sounds like shit work to me. What happens if I get really hammered with a Business Acquaintance and he becomes a Close Drinking Partner? Do I move his circles around? What happens if we hire him? Is he a Coworker and a Close Drinking Partner? The last thing I want to have to worry about is continually micromanaging another facet of life. This is important, since Google+ Circles is allegedly about privacy, and if you don’t continually cultivate your circles, you could inadvertently send out the wrong update to the wrong subset of contacts.

The redesign being horrible, color, space, and clarity-wise is only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately the sharebros don't care what color the theme is, we care about losing the main feature of google reader that no other RSS reader has, and that's the social aspect. The "redesign" was a poor attempt to move the following system of sharing news items into google+. However, google+ can't even approach the level of information sharing that greader had. For example, if I want to share an article with a sharebro, they'd have to first leave reader, go to +, find the stream for the circle his sharebros are in, and then + will only allow a thumbnail image from the article and the first two-ish sentences. Sounds like a minor inconvenience, until you realize the average sharebro was reading well over 1000+ shares a week. It's not a convenient or easy way for us to share our RSS feeds anymore. Don't even get me started on the fact that it is impossible in + to curate feeds and shares from other users, now, rather than appearing chronologically by what you have and have not read, things get thrown into the "stream" which is an uncuratable mess where it is impossible to navigate through what you've already read and what you haven't.

This information and why we are unhappy at being corralled into + is widespread on the web from techcrunch to forbes.

google sendet mit dem redesign des readers ein klares signal an die loyalen benutzer (aka nerds):

1. ihr seid uns scheissegal. auf euch können wir keine rücksicht nehmen, wir müssen nun an das grosse ganze denken. und das grosse ganze ist unser tolles google+. das funktioniert zwar noch nicht so super, ist noch immer leicht behindert (kein RSS, keine saubere, einfache möglichkeit inhalte auf fremde oder google-eigene plattformen zu transferieren (API), kaum filtermöglichkeiten ausser „circles“), aber na und? fresst oder geht sterben (exportiert euren scheiss doch einfach).

Googles Schritt ist einer von der Qualität hin zur Masse. Er zwingt einer Community, die für sich in Anspruch nimmt, modern mit Nachrichten umzugehen, einen konzeptionellen Schluckauf auf – bringt nicht um, nervt aber –, dessen Ende nicht absehbar ist und opfert dafür das einzige funktionierende (!, wenn auch kleine) soziale Netzwerk des eigenen Portfolios. Ohne Not und zu Gunsten eines Hypes, von dem es ”nichts versteht”.

A Google Reader/Google+ integration is not inherently a bad thing. I like and use both services and I have thought for a while that each could be improved by linking it with the other. But on the details, this integration is a let-down. Ultimately, what it shows, is that Google was willing to kill off Reader's sharing communities to save Google+. It's easy to see why Google would make that choice, but that doesn't lessen the disappointment and anger of those who just lost their favorite place on the web.

die gesamte dontdoevil-narration ist natürlich so viel wert wie klopapier, wenn sie sich mit facebook – und also das erste mal mit einem echten herausforderer – konfrontiert in einen moron verwandeln, der seine infomonopolistischen marktmacht ohne rücksicht auf verluste (auf seiten der user, wohin sollen sie den gehen, muhaha) ausnützt, um dem eigenen hoffnungsträger g+ ein gewisses momentum zu verleihen; wobei sie das alleine natürlich nicht evil macht, aber – wie diplix schön sagt – billig, schlampig und doof.

Fantastic post that articulates all my views on the matter better than I could ahve. I was looking forward to G+ integration and was appalled to find they just ripped my friends' shares out completely.
The red subscribe button is hilarious in comparison to the rest of the monochrome scheme.
I just hope they're soaking up feedback and prepared to move quickly on it

Das für mich dominanteste Beispiel: Ich konnte bislang sehr bequem
einigen Leuten *im Reader* folgen, ohne deren sonstige (für mich
größtenteil irrelevanten) G+ Posts lesen zu müssen.

Nun muss ich mir die für mich interessanten Teile aus deren weitaus
umfangreicheren G+ Streams herausfiltern. Das ist mir persönlich zu
zeitraubend und blöd.

Ich verzichte nun komplett auf das Sharing und das Konsumieren von
gesharten Inhalten.

Google+Blog for WordPress is a plugin that allows you to import your Google+ Public posts (and their comments) as blog posts into your WordPress setup

Simple Google+ Bookmarklet

Choose a version you want then drag the link below to your toolbar:

I use Reader to aggregate all my RSS feeds. In fact it is where I came across this post and how I follow your blog as well as hundreds of others. Being Google+ user since the beginning I had been hoping they would integrate a +1 button into the share bar rather than moving all sharing off-site but it looks like the only way to communicate with the people I currently share with on Reader is going to be adding them on +. Looking at this from Google's point of view it is a coup for + as it will ensure all that activity that takes place in what is essentially an independent social network now moves to +. I've already added all the people I follow on Reader to a circle on plus named Reader, at least those who have accounts.

If you’re an educator and you haven’t yet started experimenting with how Google+ might be the next best most amazing and awesome collaboration tool to help your classes do good work, then you’re missing out. There are some great ways to think about this to get you started. Plus, the tool is open to anyone with a gmail account and is free. So, dive in.

No, Google + can kill only networks, based on its concept, which means - centralized and corporate-managed ones. It can't kill decentralized and crowdsourced social platforms, what Diaspora has to be. Diaspora will pave the hard initial steps of the crowdsourced and crowd-ideation social platforms, but I feel they still need to try trusting the last

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Mohamed Mansour hat ein neues, recht interessantes Projekt veröffentlicht: Hangout Pad for Google+. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Chrome Extension, die einen Editor in Hangouts zur Verfügung stellt. Sinn dieser Erweiterung ist es, gemeinsam Code zu schreiben und zu entwickeln, collaborate coding also