Image via CrunchBase

By now, perhaps you’ve heard about the new social media platform launched by GOOG. Google (+) hopes not only to offer an all-in-one stop for social media crazed internet users, but to enhance its already ubiquitous and powerful search capability.

Shortly before Google +s’ social media platform became widely available – enough for me to land an invite, there was some hint of what they were up to. A little while ago they began implementing those funky +1 boxes next to results in searches, maybe you noticed that? As a blogger, this seemed like their cheesy take on the Facebook “Like” button, and it was hard to see how it would be useful if there wasn’t already some place to view all your +1’s. So I was confused for a while — but I implemented the +1 button on all my blog posts nonetheless. I figured it’d count as a vote for my page in Google’s search engine when clicked, and click I did.

It’s been about 5 days since I activated my account in Google plus , and now I get it! This is where +1’s aggregate, this is where the action is taking place – provided you have enough contributing friends/acquaintances/colleagues/ or whomever you might place in your “Circle” on the site.

Google did more than a few things right with plus+, their latest brainchild. It’s as though they took the best features of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr and integrated them using the power of “Circles” to help users segregate various streams of content.

Until now, all the popular social media sites lacked adequate filtration – if you get blocked or block someone, that’s it – never heard from or seen again. That sucks! However, by being cleverly forced to add people into user designated “Circles” the moment of contact, you gain control over whose content or stream you care to look at any given time. Not only can you control whose content you passively view, but you can control who sees the content that you throw out to the world! Facebook doesn’t have this control and I wish it did, some statuses don’t need to be shared with perfect strangers.

Now, is this a Facebook replacement? Sadly, it won’t replace FB – and part of the reason is that getting every one of your Facebook friends to sign up to G+ is going to take a while. There were efforts to try to expedite this process if you wanted to, but Facebook caught on and said NO. I actually tried this before it was halted by FB, but it didn’t work out for some other technical reason. There IS a work around involving first exporting your FB contacts to your YAHOO account, and then importing all of your yahoo contacts to G+. That worked for me, but only 80 % of my friends’ contact info was able to import. If you have hundreds, or thousands of friends it could be a strain on the servers resources and the process may timeout, I imagine.

G+ is also not like Facebook for other reasons. Once you migrate into the G space you’ll find that you don’t want to treat it as you do your Facebook profile. Case in point, I have people in my Circles whom I’ve never met or interacted with (so it’s similar to Twitter in this way) and it’s interesting to see the content shared from all around the world, especially by other photographers. Google + is just something more than Facebook. Sure it’s adequate for connecting friends and family, but it also effortlessly creates a sense of global community in the way only Google seems able to pull off. The ability to “g chat” and “hangout” using video streaming features is a powerful means to connect people; I can’t wait to try it out soon.

So, for the above reasons G+ doesn’t necessarily serve the needs of the casual Facebook user. I’d be happy if 20% of my FB contacts sign up for G+ , but I’m already using it to connect with people outside of my local social network. I don’t think everyone who uses Facebook will use the internet in the same way I do, so G+ might not make sense for them. However, it does have the essential elements of Facebook social networking, sans Farmville and spam robots-a pro in my book. But it’s just not ready to be adopted by enough people quickly enough to stay interesting to facebook transplants that only want to connect with their traditional networks. So I have reserved optimism about getting y’all on the wagon.

To Photographers

An issue photographers might be concerned with is the Terms of Service (TOS) that G+ employs. The original controversy is highlighted in this article. Although Google states that you retain the copyright to any photograph shared on the service, by posting pictures you’re giving them a royalty free license to use your image in their marketing efforts. The controversy was highlighted by Scott Bourne and elaborated on his blog where he emphasizes that photogs better read the fine print before signing up. Essentially it’s only a matter of concern to professional photographers, so amateurs needn’t worry. If you sell or license your photos exclusively to stock companies or other companies who want exclusive rights, a google posted image compromises the value of that image, so such an image will lose its value.

Bullet point: If you sell stock photography with microstock companies, or plan to ever license your photography exclusively, DON’T post those photos on G+.

G+’s photo sharing function is leagues better than Facebooks’, and is a more dramatic presentation for your work. I plan to take advantage of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0’s ability to export photos to Google Picasa. If you use Lightroom you can rapidly populate your profile with pictures via the Picasa publish service.

G+ Takes the best of all the popular Social Media websites to date and so far handles it well. Things will only get better over time, so get in early and connect faster and better to the world around you! Check out my G+ profile at http://gplus.to/cateyefotos

Related articles on the web

• 5 Chrome Extensions That Improve Google+ (mashable.com)
• Google Plus The New Social Hangout (searchenginepeople.com)
• Google+ in 15 Minutes a Day (seomoz.org)
• A Google plus and social media reflection (getintheinbox.com)