Before I go any further, I need to confess something. I don’t really like change, at least not most of the time. I subscribe to the maxim “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” As of this moment, I am a perfectly happy, self-confessed Facebook addict. There are very few things I wish Facebook would/could do that it doesn’t, so I was a bit reluctant to try Google+ when a friend sent me an invite.

But then again, I’m also curious about any sort of new technology. After less than thirty seconds’ deliberation, I accepted the invite and set up my Google+ account. What follows are my first impressions of this new social networking site. Read them with a grain of salt. I’ve only been using G+ for a week, and I haven’t devoted very much time to exploring all of its bells and whistles.

• The chat function is much, much better. Of course, that’s because the chat function is just Gchat, which has always been superior to Facebook chat. Video chat is available, as are group chats. You can set your status to away, busy, etc. But, honestly, the main reason I have always preferred Gchat to Facebook chat is that I have greater control over who sees me as online and who shows up in my online list in Gchat. Everyone I’ve friended automatically shows up on my Facebook chat list, but I have to add someone to my Gchat list much the way that we all used to add buddies on AIM.
• “Circles” is a great idea. It’s a simple, quick way to sort who I share information with. The one improvement that I hope Google makes soon is the ability to view more than one stream at the same time. Right now, I can view all of them at once, or I can click on “Athens Friends” and see only the posts from people in that circle. I wish that there was some sort of shift+click function by which I could filter out just one circle, but still see all the rest. Or filter out two circles, but see the other two. I just want options, people!
• No fan pages? But I actually liked those. In case you hadn’t heard, organizations are not supposed to be on Google+ right now. According to the article, Google is building “a similarly optimized business experience for Google+,” but it isn’t ready yet. I really hope they come through on that promise, because fan pages are very important to me. Yes that’s partly because I wrote my thesis on them, and I work (or hope to work) in public relations. I also use them extensively in my personal life. The first place I get news about favorite bands, TV shows, movies, restaurants, etc. is often from their fan page posts showing up in my Facebook news feed. If Google wants to earn my consumer vote, then they need to open up G+ to businesses ASAP. Just imagine how great a merge of fan pages and circles would be. All the news I want about my favorite organizations would be one click away, in the stream for my “organizations” circle. When I only want to interact with people I know “in real life,” I can just filter out that stream. It would, in short, be awesome.

All in all, I’m still undecided about G+. I definitely think it has potential, and I’ll be very interested to see what happens as its user base grows. Also, I’d really like someone to develop an iPhone app for it. I can access it all right in my current Gmail app, but it doesn’t have the full functionality.