MS got Facebook and Apple got Twitter...and everyone was saying...oh whats google gonna do. but google had a Plus up its sleeve. 

After many many unsuccessful attempts at Social Networking (which is surprising as they always had the basic requirement for a social network, User accounts), they finally have something which might work. The list goes on, Orkut, Buzz, the revolutionary but way ahead of time Wave...but Google Plus might not just succeed as a Social networking platform, it has the potential to be the one platform which integrates all of google, the potential to be the SharePoint of the google world. 

Google was always best positioned to win the internet, they had all the bits and pieces, mature applications from mail to spreadsheets to chat to some sort of social networking and most importantly Search. But they were missing a platform which integrates it all, Google Sites was supposed to be that, but failed. If you think about it, google is the best and really the only positioned to bring an OS with all its apps on the cloud. Only required is a integrating platform. 

the revenue model..eh, lets talk about it later. :D

anyways so just looking at Google+ as a product, Circles, or what google calls groups are a step forward. In FB or most other SNP (Social networking platforms), setting security comes after adding friends, mostly at the time of sharing. So you can just go ahead and add a friend, but not add them to a group, and then while sharing something, set up the permissions. Google makes it mandatory to add a friend (contact really) to a group, which is good. So setting up access is easier.

But its still not there. Security in groups should really work like sets, I should be able to do Union (allowed in all SNP), Intersections (not allowed) and Difference (partially allowed). The most useful is Difference really, I should be able to say my post is visible to group 'Public' - group 'Team'. Right now you can say group 'Public' - person (X, Y, Z). But adding one friend at a time is time consuming. 

Another requirement will be Inheritance in groups, and inheritance which is descending. So A group Public contains a group 'Friend' contains a group 'Best Friends'. Any permission given to Public is automatically given to Friends and Best Friends. Also elevated permissions given to 'Best Friends' is maintained for all members of 'Best Friends' even if group 'Public' or group 'Friends' is added. Well lotsa SharePoint terminology here, but it is my bread and butter. Also i have not seen permission inheritance anywhere, inheritance mostly works at the resource level, so not sure about this. 

In an ideal world, groups should really be very very easy to create, they should be a level of automation associated with it, which is governed by intelligent algorithms. So at the simplest level, if I add a friend A, a friend B and a Friend C and create a group 'roommates', when one of Friend A, B or C, as me and the other two, an automatic group 'roommates' should be created for them. Thats the basic. 

What should really happen is you should not only be suggest friends, but also groups they should be added to, or maybe just add them and then ask.

Groups should be ephemeral, that is it should be really easy to group people or to ungroup them. Of course retention requirements will require them to be persistent as well.  One way of doing this is to really have proximity rules around groups. So no delete on groups, but as the group becomes inactive it moves further away from you.

The above two will basically make groups explode, there will be unlimited number of groups created. That is not an issue. The issue is what we call unique permissions…each post, each picture, each object that you share having unique permissions. This is kinda allowed right now, but is very difficult. You have to add individuals. But you should really be able to add groups (+ and - ) and manage at that level, but this is also not as easy, unless what I mentioned above is implemented. So why and how to tackle this. Well why because of resource constraints. Imagine how much storage and processing would you require if every post had unique permissions. Querying it will take ages. So how, well I think we should just extend the apple model. Local caching for all passive content, anything which has been posted is stored both in the cloud and locally, but retrieved only from local. The Local and Cloud stay in sync, the truth is on the cloud. Local is read only.

So that was groups, if you watch Google+ closely, it is an app made for the smartphone and not really the desktop. Which is how social networking apps should be really. Also good to see that even though Wave failed as a product, as an experiment is has started contributing to other places like Google+

Google is going with a really bland and pale UI, i think the thinking is that social networking and email and all the other stuff is not just fun anymore, they are basic requirements which will integrate in ur day to day life like a phone has today and so UI should be simple enough so that you don't was time trying to spot things. 

Well true, but the lack of colors makes it very dull and dead. 

Good thing about Google+ is that it will be integrated everywhere, you should be able to share and post from anywhere google at least, and frankly, we do use google apps for almost everything on the net, think mail, reader, pictures, blogging!

Will google+ be the end of FB, well not really, i have 699 friends on FB, it will take ages for all of them to show up on google+, but yea FB will have to cleanup its act. Skype integration i think is a big win, will keep people on FB for longer, but far more is required. 

Other thing is that I personally trust the 'do no evil' company more then Zuckerberg to do the right thing, so that is an image shift that FB has to make. 

Anyways still long way from ideal, any of these, social networking along with a dashboard should be the starting point for all you do on the net, there is a lot of progress on social networking, dashboards are still missing though.

take care.

oh an special mention to full fledged SMS support for sharing and posting on Google+ just for India. your 10 year old Nokia dabba can now do social networking without a 3G or EDGE network...cheers to that!