Its "Picasa ultimatum" didn't help much either. If you have an account with Picasa, Google's photo-sharing service, the first thing Google asks is whether you'd want to share your Picasa photos. Say no, and you're not allowed to sign up at all. That seemed unnecessarily harsh.
But I quickly became addicted to Google Plus, a free service that the company is testing with a small group of users for now. It has smart and thoughtful solutions to some irksome limits entrenched in other social-media sites, mainly related to privacy settings and how to share links and posts with groups.
Google Plus seems aimed at people who are more interested in sharing things with people or groups with similar interests rather than simply amassing the biggest number of online "friends." Its seamless integration with other Google services you may use, from search to online documents, makes it easier to share things online.
I found privacy settings much easier to manage on Google Plus than on Facebook. The Picasa ultimatum forced me to learn about the settings. After all, the first thing you're likely to do after joining is limit who can see your photos.
Privacy -- deciding whom you share different posts with -- seems to be top of mind on Google Plus. That's a relief after Google's earlier debacle with Google Buzz, which had arrived unsolicited and initially created circles of friends automatically based on whom they've corresponded with on Gmail. That meant your boss could see lists of people you've been corresponding with for a new job.
With Google Plus, no one gets added automatically. Once you sign up, you add people -- similar to how...
No comments:
Post a Comment