plus.google.com

plus.google.com

Why are librarians (and the rest of the world) pretty sour on Google+? It's not the wasteland people make it out to be...in fact, I find it to be quite inspiring. There's a lot of interesting people on it sharing some great stuff. The best of all? It offers some great discussion.

I like Google+. I think it has the potential to be a great social network, but there aren't as many people contributing right now. I am partly to blame; I lurk but don't post that much.

@Andrew: I've heard that social networks often are most useful when you start contributing a lot. I've found this to REALLY be the case with G+. It's also been really nice to follow people outside of the library world. I feel more connected with the other things I am passionate about.

I have "tried" to get going on Google+ and just can't get into it. I feel that the interaction is not as high due to the lack of people that actually consistently use it. I see that it has uses, but these tools are only as good as the interaction that you get from it. Coincidentally, reminds me of Branch. Branch is a great tool, but without the interaction it just isn't as useful.

Personally, I think the reason for Google+ 's inability to gain full momentum is thats libraries already have facebook and twitter. Most of them took way to long to move to those social networks, googl+ is the same. I think in time they may transfer over (at least the new age, innovative ones). Similarly, when twitter and facebook bloomed most of the librarians in that period of time didn't want to move to those social networks at all, and only the new age innovative ones hopped in.

I do most of my discussions through Twitter -> which then post to facebook, linkedin, and Google+ . If I wanted something bigger as a discussion, I use my blog which posts to twitter which repeats the above. Idk if thats what you were asking or looking for

I keep gently pushing our patrons to make the hop from AOL to Gmail. If the patrons aren't there, I can't really engage them in cool stuff using Google Hangouts. I find this to be disappointing since I interact with my family almost exclusively through Google Hangouts.

@Amanda: I think if Google can finally found out how to properly market Hangouts (because, well in my opinion, they're simply amazing) they can have a hit on their hands.

Hangouts are great features and the mobile app has made remarkable progress. With that said, what is the killer app that differentiates them from other services? I haven't seen one yet, although Communities and Hangouts could be nice things to market.

@Nation: Hangouts and Communities seem to be the two things that they should be pushing (but oddly enough, don't seem to be). Being able to save Hangouts right to my YouTube account is so awesome. That is a killer feature.

Now if I could only convince patrons to leave behind AOL or their ISP's email accounts... The ones I've converted to Gmail love it but the others don't seem to grasp that it's a good idea not to have your cable company holding your email.