I remember when Twitter started and I was following\/being followed by about 200-300. The signal to noise ratio was very high. Because you couldn’t add pictures\/video\/music into the stream there was little distraction.<\/p>\n
Things were focussed on the the business of SEO and Social Media Manipulation. All good stuff. Of course the “drinking coffee” Tweets started to seep in and things increasingly got tedious and banal.<\/p>\n
But then an interesting thing happened to Twitter, normal people started to join it. The BBC and other mainstream media organisations came to the party. And it became a powerful tool for a marketer.<\/p>\n
Looking at my G+ stream right now, there are pictures of cars, funny videos, reviews on TV shows and so forth. Very little of what I really want, which is SEO and social media and other media stuff. Now, you could say just create a circle and blah blah blah. Problem is, it’s not the people I need to separate, it’s the topics of the posts.<\/p>\n
I am sure there are people have a lot of time on their hands to be able to tweak and learn a new social media system. I’m trying to be polite about this, but there seems to be a lot of “look at me I’m a first mover” kinda business going on.<\/p>\n
If your business is built around telling me what social media tool to use in exchange for piles of cash, then it makes a lot of sense to be here.<\/p>\n
But, I look at my stream in G+ and just see a bunch of distraction and just like Twitter can be, it’s a bit banal, a bit childish and a bit crap. Sorry if this offends, but my job is to write what I think, not to give borderline personality types the warm fuzzies.<\/p>\n
I have my Google Reader, I have Twitter, I have Facebook, I have Google Alerts, I have Linked in, I have email. I very much doubt I will miss something if I don’t squat on G+ as client work ends up being late (as it mostly does, but that’s another story).<\/p>\n
There is a big bag of reason to be on G+ and check it out. But if it does not fit my strategy it ends up being a big bag of wank. I think there are reasons to keep tabs on the system as these things tend to morph into something that wasn’t initially expected. But the idea of sitting here, eating carrot cake and ingesting the stream of G+ leaves me a bit queasy. Much better to go and read my copy of the Guardian which I bought in a pique of righteous indignation whilst tutting at the piles of unsold copies of the Sun.<\/p>\n