At the beginning of the series of blog posts on Google Plus that I started earlier on this week I mentioned how I would be putting together about four different articles about my first impressions on playing around quite a bit with G+, something that those folks who have been following this blog for a long while now would know it’s not something that I do rather often, so you can imagine how it is starting to grow on me more and more by the day. You could say I am having a blast with it, to the point where most of my other external social networking activities have gone a bit dormant in the last few days! I do realise though how I still need to post that fourth article and all, but I thought I would go ahead talk about something else today: the value I am getting from Google Plus already on my first week of usage. Because I guess that’s what we all care about at this point in time, right? What (business) value do we want to get from G+? We all remember that social for the sake of social is not going to take us anywhere. So how am I benefiting from making use of it at the moment? Well, let me summarise it with a single sentence: facilitated serendipity on steroids!
Yes, that’s right! Earlier on today I had the great pleasure of experimenting some more and play with some of the various different features from G+. If a couple of days ago I mentioned how important and critical the combination of both real-time and offline interactions would be like (See “Google Plus – Bridging Together Too Irreconcilable Worlds“) today I had the mind-blowing experience of trying out Hangouts with my boss, another one with a fellow IBMer, and another one with Paul Jones, who is going through a truly fascinating experiment I am hoping to talk about very soon, as it relates, quite a bit, with my own mantra of living “A World Without Email“. But more on that later on …
Anyway, like I was saying, the experience of the Hangouts was just utterly surprising and very re-energising. Fantastic, to say the least!! Having an opportunity to do a simple video conference with the highest quality on both video and audio fronts is just priceless, even more when that videoconference can host up to 10 people concurrently without a glitch! Well, I know now that with that blog post I mentioned above I fell short, very short, on what I think is going to be the killer feature from Google Plus at this point. And I keep hearing lots of great things as well about Huddle, the one other feature I still need to play with!
So this whole Hangouts experience surely has got a very clearly defined business value, at least, for me: connect, reach out, share your knowledge and collaborate with those folks who you share a common affinity with! Your social networks. But it gets better, because earlier on today, while most of us are still trying to get the hang out of Google Plus, so plenty of the conversations are still around how do we do what in G+ without going crazy, we are starting to see plenty of golden gems come afloat amongst those conversations that are starting to make it worth while hanging around for a little while longer.
And I thought I would go ahead and share with you folks one of them I bumped into myself earlier on today, that I think you would also enjoy it yourselves. It’s a short video clip, very witty, sharp, straight to the point, hilariously funny, very engaging and fun to watch, put together by my good friend Kevin Jones, which makes for some perfect viewing before the weekend kicks off:
The video clip lasts for a little bit less than three minutes and in a very refreshing and truly entertaining manner Kevin reminds us all why it’s worth while paying attention to Social Technologies, experiment with them, find out our sweet spot and use cases and figure out whether they would be providing us with an additional value add that we can incorporate into our overall productivity, effectiveness and business performance, or not, and his point on the importance to overcome fear and embrace change is just brilliant!
In a way, the whole spirit permeating through the video clip is just proving the point of why a whole bunch of us are exploring Google Plus at the moment, to see whether it’d be another social networking tool we would be adding into the mix, or whether it would replace a few others, or, just simply, whether it would stick around. Keeping that open mentality towards it certainly is one of the strongest points from this video and one of the reasons why, for yours truly, Google Plus is here to stay. At least, for me. Even thoughit will redefine the whole strategy of how I make use of social tools out there on the Social Web. Next I will be sharing that final blog post on the concept of Circles and how I am using them, but first I would encourage you all to have a look into Kevin’s video clip and if you still want to have a play with Google Plus, leave a comment over here, including in the comment form your email address, and I will share along an invite. I have been sending a bunch of them already today… A few more wouldn’t hurt, I am sure! Come and join us! The waters are lovely!
Let’s keep plussing and trying out these social technologies!
I do like the manner in which you have presented this problem plus it does indeed supply us some fodder for thought. Nevertheless, from just what I have experienced, I just hope as the actual reviews pack on that men and women remain on point and not embark on a soap box regarding the news of the day. Still, thank you for this outstanding piece and whilst I can not concur with this in totality, I respect the viewpoint