Preface

In four years on Facebook, I gained 453 friends. In four months on Google+, I have 10,141 followers. In the course of this book, you'll learn everything I know about G+ and have a bunch of fun doing it!

At first glance, Google+ (or Plus, the terms are interchangeable) seems awfully familiar. You can make Posts, like on Facebook's Wall. The Stream—a continuous page of posts from your friends—looks like Facebook's News Feed. That little +1 button on Plus is much the same as Facebook's Like button (and perhaps where the name for Plus came from).

Here's what my Plus profile page looks like currently (as this book goes to press):

Points of similarity to FB and other social media networks do not end as described above. Early reviewers remind me of the classic poem about the blind men and the elephant. One took hold of its trunk and said an elephant is like a hose. Another felt its leg and said an elephant is mighty like a tree. And so forth.

About Plus, one writer says it's a "Facebook" killer, another that with the Plus Following feature it's more like Twitter than Twitter (but more powerful), and yet another compares it to the digital media haven|Tumblr, because of its ease in sharing photos and videos.

Truth is, Google+ is all this and a good deal more. It's a redesign of social and business contact management using the latest web techniques. And it has a lot going for it, but there is one bit of magic rising above the rest and causing so many of us to come running (over ten million in its first two weeks of limited availability). That magic is Circles!

Because many already see the genius of Google's real offering—Plus is a new beginning! A chance to "reboot" our social life and to better manage all those hundreds of friends on Facebook. We have absolutely no idea who these hundreds of friends are, but their posts clutter our News Feeds.

Circles give us the ability to organize all our contacts into groups. So instead of having a huge mass of "friends" (most of whom you have no idea who they are), you have incredibly more manageable groups such as the ones Plus starts you with—Friends, Acquaintances, Family, and Following (people whose posts you wish to follow, but not interact with, like on Twitter).

You can add all the additional Circles you like. One for each club you belong to, people you went to school with, another for those you work with—the possibilities are endless.

However, as already stated, there are many more attractions. This book: