Facebook is wearing me down. FB made quite an improvement a few years ago when they simply posted status updates in realtime as they were posted. But this week they brought back "Top Stories" where they spoonfeed you updates based on what "they" think you want to see. I don't want someone else to determine what news I see. Plus they garbled up the site by adding all these other features that really muddies things up. What happened to the clean and simple Facebook? Everything is so complicated to change and adjust. It's becoming what MySpace used to be.
So I've opened up a profile on Google+ which opened up the doors to everyone this week after a two month invitation only trial period. It's cleaner and simpler. It features the elegant minimalism you see on Apple products or Google itself. I'm still testing it out and I've only been on for three days. So far only six friends have connected but I'm sure the number will increase as others ditch Facebook.
If enough of my friends ditch Facebook I'll be all in on Google+. My friend numbers on Facebook had become too bloated anyway. I've deleted 80 people in the past two weeks who I barely knew. I originally intended to just have close friends and family on Facebook. But that blew out of control as people I hadn't seen in 20 years who I didn't even like back then requested friendship.
In Google+ you create circles of people and can easily control who sees what on your profile. You can easily control where your stream of information goes. Facebook is trying to remedy this but their options are clunky. Google+ seems very intuitive and easy to figure out.
My only beef with + so far is that you can't send private messages to friends. At least I haven't figured it out yet. And to send a public post to a single friend rather than to a circle requires you to post on your own page then type in who you want it to go to. Quite a change of thinking from FB where you simply found your friend's wall and posted on it. Everything on Google+ starts with your page.
So just as + is in the beta stages, I'm in the beta stages of trying it out. If none of my friends or family shift over I guess I'll stick with FB. But I hope they try it out.
Photo: The Dynamo. JDW is second from the left
