If you buzz and don't succeed..If you buzz and don't succeed...

I am writing this blog because I have just spent the last few days playing with Google's latest attempt at social networking G+ and I am definitely NOT leaving Facebook.

I signed up for Google plus courtesy of a friend who was already on it. Google first forced me to merge (or alter or whatever it did) my two different gmail accounts personal and private into one (duh) before I could get on as a bona fide G+ user. I found that a few of my contacts were already on but on closer inspection discovered it was the usual bleeding edge of technology users.

I then tried the "Move YOUR Facebook Albums to Picasa and share it with your Circle" application which is now a Chrome extension (meant downloading Chrome) which promptly deposited ALL my Facebook pictures into Picassa folders but guess what - I now have to tag them all over again AND caption them too. With more than 200 photographs captioned over the years - I don't think I will bother.

Circles - this is supposed to be the new real deal that will wow us to leaving Facebook in droves. Well I got news for you - I really don't need to bucket information out to my groups this way thanks. Besides I have over 1,000 contacts and don't really want the pain of separating them one at a time yet again - Outlook already does that for me.

There's Home which is basically the same as FB's where you get a stream of status updates, comments and content from anyone you've allowed to shoot you stuff. (see the screenshot below)

Then there's photo's (read Picassa), Profile where all my stuff can be accessed by moi and the infamous Circles which allows you to group your contacts.

Anyway to cut the story short - there's way too much non-intuitive new stuff to do and I can't help feeling Google is abusing my personal data the way it presents my profile and setting. I will therefore wait to see what others say but my vote on G+ for now is a thanks but no thanks - lets see if critical mass changes my mind.
TD