I thought it was generally understood that lifespan on the web is pretty transitory. Yes, there are a few stayers such as delicious, flickr, twitter, facebook, etc. But as myspace proved, there are no guarantees. What people seem to struggle to relinquish is the pointless quest to find the one web service that will do everything they want. And so the google plus … firstly, its nothing new – better usability and some fancy features, but it’s reinvention (the foundation of the www), slick marketing and of course the usual ramp of twitter celebrities plugging it. Its tedious – what is wrong with spreading yourself amongst many services – there are plenty of ways to combine and deliver your data in variety of ways. Maybe the real issue is education, not simply providing more of the same, in prettier packages, google!
Google Plus do offer features to integrate into, and pull in data from, other networking sites. Cross-posting is useful, but largely helps the cross-posting web service provider’s website statistics. Again, cross-posting is nothing new – just another site to add to the list. Aggregators are best way – simply services to pull in data you enter on websites into one area. Now some backwards web services don’t offer decent API or even RSS feeds of your activity. They won’t last long. This is basically just to say think carefully before diving into google plus – I have a feeling you will just end up disappointed – again.
Now lets see if a day goes by without multiple people declaring “death of twitter” or “death of facebook”. Of course they will die out – and so will google plus.
jaffamonkey 