I totally disagree with that. Facebook sorely lacks such a feature, and the lack of it has led to "spammy" messages from so called "friends" you barely even know, or care about in your list.

Google+ seems to solve a lot of issues with Facebook. And I think even non-techies can be relatively easy convinced to use it once they see how it works. Basically, Google+ looks like a huge leap over Facebook because of all those neat products tied together. People will switch from anything as long as there is a big leap in benefits, and I think Google+ offers that.

For example, why do you have friends on FB you barely know in reality? You should only have your genuine friends on Facebook. This simple rule solves the "annoying status update from someone I don't care about" problem, which is the most frequent complaint I hear about Facebook. I actively delete people a few times a year who I don't expect to see again.

I remember when adding people you had to enter something for "How did you meet this person?" and if you checked "I don't know them", it would close the box and say "Well why are you adding them?"

Facebook want you to be connected to as many people as possible because this network of connections is essentially what they sell. Just like Google, with facebook you are the product that is sold to the advertisers (the difference being that currently with facebook your friends are the product too, though that difference is set to vanish if Google can get the social thing right enough to attract a critical mass of users).

I agree, but I also think that eventually, this devalues Facebook.

It's like you had this party with all your friends, and then all your coworkers and former classmates and people you met at conferences and people who share your interest in banjo music all showed up too.

And eventually, it wasn't a party anymore; it was just a random collection of people. And you started thinking, "wouldn't it be nice if I had a place for just me and my friends?"

Aye, I think that is what Google is going for. They might be early to the game though: have enough people got to that stage that FB will see a large number trying Google's offering just for that reason?

It reminds me of search engines proclaiming "2,800,000 results returned". Really? Most searchers never go beyond the first couple pages in the query result set. Who cares? Likewise, other than playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, who wants to see all these tertiary relationships that mean nothing?

If you only add your actual friends, Facebook is a pretty good experience. It's not perfect, you still have a to block a few apps, but once done it's not a bad place.

I also think if you're adding people to your Facebook that have anything to do with your employment you're insane.

But maybe it is because I am 30+ that these distinctions to me seem very clear.

Read: Not you.

It would seem I am majorly in the minority in how I use Facebook. I figured fellow hackers would be similar, but it apperas not.

Twitter was better about this, in that following someone is a one-way connection, not a two-way one. Google+ lets you have it both ways: putting someone in your circle means you'll see their public posts (Twitter), if that person puts you in their circles, you'll see their private ones (Facebook).

Things I want to share with friends of family may not be things I want coworkers seeing. I don't want to share photos of drunken antics with bar friends with my grandparents. I don't want updates about a sick relative to become office gossip.

Yes, the feature sort of exists in Facebook to kind of get this functionality, but there is a massive appeal in a network that treats the idea that not all acquaintances are equal as a core concept. And because it's a central value of the network, I have a lot more faith that it should actually work than the Facebook model, which has already failed me plenty of times in the past.

Hopefully, with Google+ Circles my private categorization of my friends is not shared with them. They should only see what I share.

(Granted, it's not very discoverable)

Only bummer is that you can't do fancy options like that with the Facebook iPhone app. You can only do your default, the normal options like Friends Only, or specific groups.

Overall, I think that Facebook needs to do a better job of educating its users about these features, and make them more prominent, but I find these features are certainly quite adequate.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I think Google+ looks pretty neat. It's more along the lines of what I am looking for in a social network than Facebook is. But I do not plan to use it for the exact reasons you mentioned.

My searches are private. Anything I do on a social network is public. I do not want the two of them mingling. I don't want the possibility of an accident. I don't want a single entity to "own" my search and social data.

I really wish someone else had created this.

You mean like any number of startup social networks each year that fail because they can't get the traction which Google is more likely to? It's sad, but that's the way it is - there are innovative and good social networking sites out there, but without the backing that a Google product has they keep failing.

It's a secure (SSL), anonymous (no cookies), ad-free Google interface. You can make it the default in your search bar in any browser either by hand or through an extension. Note that the results are much more minimal (no links to similar articles, cached versions, etc.), which you may prefer, as I do, or not.

Also, using a search engine directly is not the same thing as using it through one of these intermediaries (especially while logged in).

I'm with you. If anyone but Google had made this I would be ecstatic. Heck, even MS.

on the + side (hah! get it??), the ui looks nice, so hopefully this means google with start paying more attention to the look and feel of their applications.

Google+ is refreshing, it shows social networking can be better.

also, if you distrust facebook, what makes you trust google? they've had plenty of privacy issues in the past in regards to social networking (buzz, etc).

Google+ launched an hour ago in private beta, isn't it a bit early to call it refreshing and better? :)

There's a lot to be said for having your content pushed to your network in a way that's easy to use.

In fact, Buzz's integration of "external feeds" is much better done than FB. I'd hope this applies to Google+ also.

I dont like the UI of flickr (cant even use it, and Im a comp-sci major) and it doesnt integrate well with Facebook (tagging), where most of my friends are, sadly. I guess flickr might have improved since I last gave it a chance, but still something doesnt feel good about it. The same for picasa.

Hundreds of millions of people, apparently. Anyway, you can download the high res image nowadays via the link below the picture.

All Google needs is a beachhead, right? For Facebook it was Harvard and then Ivy League schools. Perhaps for Google their beachhead is the Anti-Facebook people.

Once it grows a bit, people start writing apps that abstract FB and G+. Think: iPhone app with a Newsfeed feature that just seamlessly merges your FB and G+ feed.

The existence of apps like that will make it trivial for people to have a G+ profile in addition to -- even if never instead of -- their Facebook account. And then it's up to Google to grow more and more mindshare.

Maybe it'll always be an also-ran. A Facebook lil brother. But I wouldn't just write it off. We've seen this story before.

I really hope Google realizes that and draws a big fat line between searches and social profiles, and then makes it really apparent to their users.

Making people think they're sharing their everyday searches with their social circle is enough to completely kill this before it even gets started.

People won't give this a second thought, and hopefully Google will do a good job in keeping the concepts clearly separated.

Anyways, I don't think it's necessarily something people will be alarmed about, I just think it's something that should be made extremely clear because on the off chance people do start to worry, and how fast FUD can travel. It really could kill what looks like a great platform it that happened.

well G watches your searches anyway, even tunes the search results to your search history, as its cookie dependend, not log in dependend. see http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=...

In other words my entire online life is compartmentalized. It makes sense for me to do this even though it can be tedious. Circles would make this a lot easier by the looks of things, giving me one place to post everything, simply choosing who sees what content.

Getting people to use Google+ when they already use Facebook and/or Twitter though is Google's biggest challenge.

Everybody reading you posts is like nobody, or at least nobody new. You have to get it to them somehow and here it won't happen just because you have a cool profile picture.

Your searches? It won't show up in your feed, it will only count in your interest. Deeply hidden, like it is already. Google seems to be good at this.

They are targeted so right on the spot, where the whole social discovery-networking can get better, that I think it could fly without everybody exporting and etc..

Maybe it could get everybody laid, as it won't be starving on your current friends of friends network. :)

I think Google+'s problem might be that it takes too much work to curate circles. Most people might just settle for Facebook because you don't have to think!

I think Facebook does the same - or at least attempts to, through the use of cookies (via embedded apps, and the Facebook comment system).

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I think it's about time Facebook had some serious competition - and I'm hoping that Google+ could provide a good alternative.

In relation to the Myspace, Facebook provided an iterative progression. Since its introduction, social networking has obviously become so much more important. I think it's far more difficult for Facebook to iteratively change the paradigm its developed because its users aren't used to change. User re-education is difficult.

From what I've read, Google+ is going to offer some valuable features missing from Facebook. The circle idea appeals a lot - and I like the sense that the platform seems to be geared as one tool in a suite of social utilities, rather than an all encompassing monolith.

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"Circles? Actually I think that many people like the idea of their posts are being read by as many people as possible and not just the ones with similar interests [..]"

I don't agree - some people might want everyone to read their posts, but I think that's a small subset of the general population.

Re. your example; on the flip-side, I think an awful lot of the non-techies will quickly get bored of hearing about about Android API woes. Circles will provide them with a way to choose, and choice is something which is almost universally lauded.

They have no "Unique Value Proposition".

Their value proposition is - don't let your mum see what your college roommate tags you in.

Also, the one thing i that could hamper its adoption is that google tends to make its products overly complicated ("for the computer-literate, not soccer moms")