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This is a guest post by Elise Lévêque, she is an ambitious freelance writer with a passion for anything and everything social media. She currently works closely with White Pages, a company offering telephone number lookup and postcode search. 

Why, I hear you cry, do I need another social networking site? 

Good question...



We have all experienced that moment of despair when we find ourselves reading about how ‘Stephanie is eating bolognaise’ on a Facebook update, or reading tweets about Davina McCall’s favourite cheese at 2am.

With such exhausting gibberish to contend with already, many of us are unsure why we would need another social networking platform...

To be honest, I felt pretty cynical about Google+ for this reason. It was a bit like being asked to eat a box of chocolate éclairs after I’d just eaten a Belgian torte and a tray of Viennese whirls.

After finding that a few of my business contacts and friends were on there though, I gave it a go anyway.

And now? Well, after a few hiccups and ‘who-say-what-when-now’s!? I’m finally convinced that Google+ is the way forward, and here’s why...

The Secret’s in the Circles

Ah, that terrible moment when Bob from the IT department’s friend posted pictures of him riding a children’s Postman Pat car outside Tesco wearing nothing but a badly positioned toga. He seemed like such a quiet, straight-laced kind of fellow...

The really awkward thing about Facebook and twitter is that anyone can see what’s going on in your life. If you accept a friend request from a work colleague on Facebook they will then have instant access to everything you ever posted. Photos of you at seven playing Danny Zuco in the school play...holiday snaps of you and your ex...a suspicious comment posted by Bob from the IT department about the whereabouts of a misplaced toga...

At the same time, you don’t want to appear unfriendly and thus get shunned in the staffroom. Conundrum...

Whatever clever chap thought up the idea of Google+ circles deserves a medal. It basically means that you can choose who you want to share things with. Put all your work related friends in one circle, your old school mates in another, and your fellow embarrassing hobby participants in another (The Matchbox Enthusiast Crew)!

Your chosen circle dwellers cannot see which circle they are in, or what it’s called, so you can even have a ‘people I don’t really like but who wear nice shoes’ circle, if you really want to, and they’ll never know.

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MAKE IT STOP!

Okay, so on to Stephanie with her spaghetti and all that celebrity cheese talk. One of the finer features of Google+ is that you can MUTE a conversation. That’s right, so if some boring conversation is taking place that is filling up your stream, just mute it and it will cease. Ah...now that’s better.

Simplify and Unify

Google being Google - everybody is involved in their wonderful world in one way or another.

The advantage of using Google+ is that you can then integrate all your Google applications so that they complement each other.

This means you can reply to Google+ notifications and comments whilst still in Gmail. You will also be able to pull up your Google+ circles in Gmail and click on individual’s pictures to show e-mails just from them.

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The two basically work together like bread and butter.

For those who already have a house on planet Google, currently use Chrome, Gmail and Google Reader...it makes sense to get on the Google+ train.

Here ends my defence of Google+, I’m sure there are plenty of people who will completely disagree with me. Do your worst below!