Well, time is running fast, and I counted my first week of G+ experience. It is still too early to share any specific experience, but probably a good time to share some of my initial thoughts. For the moment, I can see Google+ as a real geekdom. Most of the people there are mostly experimenting, so did I. The main question I wanted to ask, in the beginning, is how Google+ can be used by businesses as well as how Google+ potential can be used in business applications.
Personal Workflow
I started from the analyzes of my personal workflow. I can seaparate my activities into content creation, content consumption, maintaining relationships and broadcasting. The main tool for my content creation activity is blog (WordPress). For the last years, any attempts to replace or combine WordPress usage with additional tools failed. My main content stream is blogging. It seems to me, Google+ is not going to change anything here for me in a visible future. I still don’t have a stable picture stream – all professional and personal photos are fragmented and only part of them lives on the cloud. On the side of consumption, G+ easy became a part of my consumption streams. The easiest way for me was to consume Google+ as RSS stream, which in parallel can be viewed on iPad using Flipboard. Sharing was easy as well. I’m sharing my content today on multiple sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. Google+ becomes another one, for the moment. Not a big difference…
Relationship and Networking
Building connections in Google+ is different from other networks. First of all, Google+ is asymmetric. It means you can connect to a person without having this connection confirmed. It is different from Facebook and LinkedIn. Circle mechanism is powerful and I like it much more than existing list mechanism in Facebook and Twitter.
Google+ and Business
The biggest question I have is what Google+ can provide for business. For the moment, Google+ is blocking creation of business profiles. However, take a look on the following video. You can hear clear statements that Google is planning to introduce Google+ to a business domain.
Google+ and PLM Business Domains
What are possible domains of Google+ applications in business. Future usage of Google+ tools for a better collaboration is obvious – ad hoc meetings, chat, email, mobile group calls, messaging. Circles provide an efficient team and group organization mechanism. Finally, a video conference can be a good competition to Skype. Next level of benefits related to future integration of Google Apps. It can make collaboration even stronger. Group sharing of spreadsheets can be a very strong feature in PDM/PLM domain.
What is my conclusion? Obviously, it is too early to make a conclusion. It is interesting to know what we will feel with regards to Google+ closer to the X-Mass party. What I can tell is that for the last week Google+ succeeded to take some attention, and I embedded it into my day-to-day flow. I like user experience and some features look very promising. Time will show if this is for real. Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg
