I’ll be perfectly honest, I love Google+ but I’m considering shelving it. The problem is that it does not play well with others. Google+ wants you to jump ship and lock you into the Google ecosystem at the exclusion of other channels. It seems to have taken a leaf out of Facebook’s, well, … book.
For long time users of social tools like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr and Foursquare this is completely out of the question. Many of us use each tool in slightly different way, have a number of important social interactions in each ecosystem and, through the magic of in-app sharing or sites like ifttt can get them cross posting pretty efficiently.
Twitter: 140 character mini mind-dumps. Social interaction on a broad scale across a number of interests.
Facebook: Closed ecosystem of real friends and family members. I share photos of my kids with these people. I would invite any of these people to my house for dinner and a glass of wine.
Tumblr: When I have a bit more to say and Twitter just won’t do. When I want to share a photo, video, quote or short creative paragraph.
WordPress: Personal branding. This is where my long, thought out articles go. This is where I market me; my photographs, short stories, or novel.
Foursquare: A little geo-location fun. Useful for saving lists of top restaurants/coffee houses and for exploring what’s around you.
And then there is Google+.
I love the quality of content on G+ – there are so many interesting people and topics of conversation. I love the notifications, and the iOS app, and the concept of circles of interests. I seriously could make this the source of truth, replacing Twitter and probably a lot of what I use Tumblr for. But, it would still need to play well with all the other tools listed above. It would still need to cross post to Twitter because I have spent years interacting with amazing people there and I’m not going to cut my loses and just move on. It would need to talk to Facebook so I can share interesting content with my friends and family. It would need to post up to Tumblr and WordPress so I can target those platforms from time to time.
But it doesn’t, or not that I can see. Please someone show me a way where I can use a #fb tag in a Google post to target Facebook without having to rely on flaky 3rd party RSS workarounds. Please show me how I can post a tweet and update Google+ without having to copy-paste between two apps or websites.
Until Google+ realise that they are losing more people by closing their ecosystem than they would by embracing a truly social model I am forced to cut my loses and stick with my traditional, if somewhat wired together, social model.
Come on Google, what have you got to lose?