At 3:54 PM on Tuesday afternoon, I received an e-mail telling me that my friend Hope was “hanging out.” Having no idea what this meant—and being at work and therefore in no position to go “hang out” with her—I ignored both the e-mail and the novel “(Google+)” label next to her name. Surely this was another of those Google features that would come and go silently.
Remember Google Buzz—that weird quasi-Twitter? Or the “Important” emails tag, which to us laypeople seems exactly the same as the “Starred” tag?
Later that evening though, I found social media sites bustling with people seeking Google+ invitations. Apparently they were in short supply and hard to snag, much like those original Gmail invites.
Now I wanted in.
I thought about that time years ago when I made fun of my older brother for joining this strange website at college. All he seemed to do on it was share personal information about which I couldn’t imagine anyone else cared. It was called Facebook.
Facebook is of course the measuring stick by which Google+, Google’s stab at social networking, will chart its success (or lack thereof). Early reviews seem to have high hopes for the network, whose most exciting feature seems to be the ability to group friends into Circles and then decide which Circles you want to share pieces of information with—a streamlined answer to concerns about privacy and transparency on Facebook.
(MORE: Impressions: Google+ Is Everything Facebook Should Be)
If Facebook allows us to be responsible about our privacy, Google+ forces us to; requiring us, from the get-go, to separate the friends from the acquaintances, the parents from the co-workers. Huddles are a revamped version of the group text. The AOL chat room has been put on camera and brought into the 21st century with Hangouts, one of which Hope was seemingly part of on Tuesday afternoon.
I figured that I had already received one of those coveted invites to Google+. That was why I got Hope’s “hanging out” email in the first place, right? But when, on Tuesday evening, I returned to the previously-overlooked email and giddily clicked the “Learn more about Google+” link, prepared to set up my account, I found the gates locked. I could leave my email address (and did), along with the rest of the masses, and Google would let me know when they were open for business.
“Already invited?” some smaller print read. “We’ve temporarily exceeded capacity. Please try again soon.” It was unclear whether I had missed the boat or never had a spot on board in the first place. Nevertheless, point taken: I was not yet part of the Google+ Circle.
Inquiring further, I learned that on Tuesday, a limited number of people—many of them seemingly Google employees—received 15 invitations each to a “field trial” version to distribute. Those lucky few who were invited, received no further invitations to hand out. It seemed that my brother was again having the last laugh in the tech department: He had gotten an invite from a friend at Google. And though he couldn’t invite me, he assured me I had already been added to his “Family” Circle.
Google refuses to lay out a timeline for the Google+ Project–emphasizing the “project” part of it so as to remind users that more features are in the works and they’re not done hammering out all of the kinks. “How long the testing phase lasts, and how the product evolves will really depend on how it goes,” explains a Google spokesperson. “We don’t have a set amount of time.”
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The only consolation prize for the plebs not in the initial bunch is a virtual tour of Circles and Hangouts and Huddles. Then it’s time to log back into Facebook—the real Faceook. Google had better hurry up.
(LIST: 5 Failed Social Networks Even Worse Than MySpace)
Late yesterday afternoon, just as I was bemoaning Google’s exclusivity–what’s a social network after all with only a handful of people allowed in (well, high school…)—I logged onto Google+ for what seemed like the millionth time. The site asked me for my name and birth date and suddenly I found myself within the walls of Google+. When my co-worker tried, she still could not get in. I wasn’t exactly sure why or how, but less than 26 hours after Hope told me she was “hanging out,” Google had heeded my cries. I was one of the cool kids. +1 for Google.
I may have gotten onto the site because of the online form I filled out. More likely, I got one for the very same reason that I got Hope’s “hanging out” email—she had placed me in one of her Circles.
A disclaimer on my Google+ screen explained the situation to me: “You’re part of a small group of people who are helping to test Google+. When you share something with people who are not yet able to use Google+, they will receive it via email but won’t be able to comment or engage with the content like other Google+ users. They’ll be able to join Google+ as we let more users in over time.” The site seemed to be opening up even further, giving me the capability to invite anyone else. But hours later, the invitation button had mysteriously vanished from the right-hand side of my screen.
(MORE: Resharing Loophole: Is This Google+’s First Privacy Flub?)
My first evening on Google+ was spent organizing friends and family members into Circles and browsing through the photos and information that my fellow early-adopting friends had posted. What I appeals to me most about the site are not the Circles, however, but how clean and professional it looks. For years, Facebook was for the younger generation and now, even as parents and grandparents have logged on, it hasn’t lost some of that youthful stigma. No one wants to be caught on Facebook at work.
The same won’t be true with Google+. Google chat has already had a similar effect on instant messaging, taking programs like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Chat and tucking them neatly and unobtrusively into your email box. Many offices, far from shunning it, now use Gchat to communicate.
Google+ has the same potential to revolutionize social networking, to force us to realize that sharing images and websites and chatting face to face with email contacts is not a distraction but a twenty-first century reality—just as important as checking email or keeping a calendar, the two tabs that fall next to “Zara+” on the black toolbar that now stretches across the top of my Google Chrome web browser. Apple has synchronized our products, allowing our computers, phones, tablets, and music players to interact and interrelate. Google has now synchronized our social and professional lives.
(MORE: Apple Debuts ‘iTunes in the Cloud’)
But, I better get back to Zara+. I’m trying to plan my first Hangout. Let me know if you’re interested. We’ll meet in front of our computer screens at 3:54 PM.