Thomas J. West Music

After about a month on Google Plus, there are definitely some features that get the thumbs up from me.

Easily Connect With Your Tribe

Google uses Twitter-like following procedures, making it much easier to connect with people with similar interests. At the same time, the "incoming" feature allows you to see posts by people who have added you to one of their lists (called "circles" on G+) so you can basically vet them to see if you want to follow their content.

Easy Access To Sharing Controls

Don't want complete strangers following you? Another of Plus's great features it easy access to share controls, so you can decide post by post who to initially send your content to. This eliminates the need for a seperate Facebook "message box" and allows you to aim your post at a target audience, including the general public. Note, however, that once you post something initially, any of your target audience can then share it with people outside your target audience (you get this nice little-pop up that says "This post was originally shared with a limited audience – remember to be thoughtful about who you share it with." Another nice feature: you can edit content after it's been posted, avoiding that "oops - damn!" moment.

Convenient Roll-Over Controls

One of the things I really like on G+ is how you can click the notifications in the upper right corner, revealing a drop down that shows you all your updates without changing the content of the page you're viewing, even if you're viewing a Google site other than Plus. You can then easily interact with your notifications in the dropdown without navigating away from your current page. Every bit of clickable content in the updates allows you to simply roll your mouse over it to interact with it in another pop-up. Love it - that's a +1.

Monitor Saved Google Searches With Sparks

Another feature I really like but keep forgetting to use is Sparks. Sparks are basically saved searches on Google, similar to Google Alerts. They are meant to spark conversation by finding content you are interested in and sharing it with your followers. It's an easy way to keep track of stuff you want regular information on. I just have to get used to using it. It's similar to making a Twitter list, but you're following actual content on the internet in general instead of individual posts.

Hangouts - The True Gold Of G+

I wrote previously about how Google Plus's Hangouts Feature has strong possibilities for music education and that has not changed. There was a neat article on Mashable recently on four different ways people are using Hangouts, including using it for a live concert. Streaming a live concert is not a new concept, but the Hangout room allows for a different level of intimacy with your audience because everyone involved is on video chat and only 10 are allowed at a time.

Features That Are Still Questionable: Huddles

Google Plus has some features I'm still scratching my head about. Huddles are free group text messaging for mobile devices. Nice idea, esecially for those who want to save money on their texting plan, but the method you use to invite people needs to be managed carefully. If you invite an entire circle, everyone gets a ping on their mobile device. This causes confusion because people aren't used to huddles yet, plus currently huddles are only supported on Android phones, so other users can't join you but still get pinged. I also found that the Huddle app didn't always ping me when a new message appeared while I was not viewing the app directly. Jury's still out on that one.

Features That Are Still Questionable: The Whole +1 Thing

You can +1 someone's post, which is basically the same as a Facebook "like". Got that - they're lost to the ether the same way. But, you can also +1 any content on the web that supports +1, including anything you search on Google. Those +1's however, show up on your G+ Profile page under a "+1's" tab. It basically amounts to the same thing as the Facebook "links" list. It's not easily accessible, just like Facebook's. Dunno how useful that will be.

What Dreams Will Come - New Features On Google Plus

The G+ development team, reacting to user comments, recently began a What's New In Google Plus blog to keep everyone informed of developments in this project, which is still basically in beta. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when they roll out the functionality for groups, businesses, non-profits, and so on. I'm hoping that Google's golden touch is transferred to these features, as they could potentially be very powerful.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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