Dear Google, I am not buying Plus

Google+ might be a decent alternative to Twitter, but it does not play well with others

Okay Google, we get it. You make some really great products. But what’s the deal with Google+? The service is seems to aspire to be mix between Facebook and Twitter, yet is lacking the critical differentiators that both of Facebook and Twitter offer.

Facebook and Twitter have become huge for a few reasons. The first, is a low low barrier to entry. The second, is the ease of integration for Facebook/Twitter with each other – and the number of ways to access. Android and iPhone both offer deep Facebook and Twitter integration. I doubt iOS will ever integrate Google+ too deeply – simply because of the competition. All said, the real question is what is Google’s intent with Google+?

It seems that Google has done this before (with Wave and Buzz just to name a couple). They release a capability to market – that is not necessarily ready to go (nor fully thought out). Google+ is trying to take the spot of both Facebook and Twitter – and to be your go to for your entire social media consumption.

While I’m always open to a new service (especially one from Google which COULD better integrate into my workflow), Google+ is not that service and here is why:

Google+ has terrible integration with other services

It will easily let you add Facebook or Twitter (and publish there), but will not (easily) allow you to publish from Facebook/Twitter to Google+

The Google+ app is just not very good
Circles? A good idea at first, but how many circles do I need – how long will this take?
Google+ integration into Google search results (very unlikely I care about Google+ results in any searches, as in, likelihood = zero)
Nobody I really care about uses Google+ (and not other media sources (If you’re going to get me to migrate to a new service, you better have some high-speed differentiation)
I haven’t yet figured out the Google+ notification system (I can’t seem to get them out of my inbox, let alone my GMail screen. THIS IS ANNOYING.)