I have the distinct impression I've used that quote in a blog title before, but whatever.
Some observations. Google+ doesn't have any crossposting functionality, neither offering any way to automatically post content from any of your other networks to Google+, nor to update any other network with your activity on Google's new social networking site. It's its own little continent. This could be attributed to the service currently being in 'field trial', but considering how polished and fleshed-out it is it would seem this descriptor was only used to indemnify Big G against the kind of privacy backlash that mired their previous social effort, Buzz.
Fortunately they've learned valuable lessons from the Buzz failure, by actually raising the bar on the concept of social networking privacy. They also clearly learned another lesson from that experience, which I believe is the reason why there's no in or out function in G+ so far.
A Googler friend of mine swapped Twitter for Buzz once it became available, because it really wasn't that bad and it was very convenient, being integrated into Gmail. After some months, though, he disappointedly 'came back', observing that the only people posting anything to Buzz in his circle of acquaintance were merely autoposting their Twitter or Facebook activity to it. And what's the point of following a social stream that's just a reflection of other, more active social streams?
Okay, to be fair, they're playing it smart and rapidly iterating the service before giving out an API to let third-party developers post stuff to G+. That's totally fair, too.
What I'm really interested in is how they'll treat the posting from G+ to other services, which is a non-trivial, but entirely doable undertaking even at this early stage. Maybe you could link with Facebook so that it becomes a virtual Circle you can add to any post, or you can configure your Public feed so that everything you post to it is also pinged on Twitter.
Given how smart the people involved in this project have been so far, I can only assume it'll be magical and revolutionary.
- Alex F. Vance
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