Google Plus is promising. Even the tech pundits that are quick to find flaws are having a hard time coming up with anything to complain about. There’s a lot of talk about how much Google has learned.
As Gina Trapani says:
I’ve been been watching Google flail around social web apps for a few years now, so what I appreciate most about Google+ is that it’s a well-thought out product informed by past experience.
Gina Trapani, SmarterWare.org – http://smarterware.org/8248/what-google-learned-from-buzz-and-wave
Google has made a lot of good design decisions. A lot of the credit goes to Andy Hertzfeld and his team doing the design. They have thought through the way people will interact on this new system, but also more subtle points of sharing, privacy and control that have previously evaded comprehension in Google’s analytical culture.
The insight that people talk and share differently with different groups of friends, family and acquaintances is as important as it is obvious. Many have pointed this out as a problem with all the social networking systems, but none of them have sorted out how to deal with it. First reports from this limited Field Trial are that Google really got this right. They created a simple drag-and-drop interface for creating and managing Circles – it’s actualy fun!
But I don’t want to list out all the features and what’s right and wrong with them. I want to talk about what’s missing…
What’s missing is collaboration.
Google Wave was a fascinating if flawed try at redefining collaboration. Many errors were made in the design and workflow in Wave, but the biggest error was trying to make it a replacement for email. Because while we use email for all sorts of things that it does poorly, email isn’t what needs to be fixed. Collaboration is what needed fixing. Rethinking.
What if the collaboration potential of Wave is rebuilt and re-imagined on top of Google+? What if there was a wave-like instant collaboration stream available to your Circles?