July 5, 2011 | Awesome Apps, LinklogI???ve been using Google+ for almost a week now, and I like it more and more every day. It???s a great way to manage different, often concentric, groups of people, among many other things. One thing I hadn???t considered, though, is how well Google+ might work in a workplace setting. Simon Mackie explains:
Google+ is a lot like Facebook, offering users the ability to connect to other users, post status updates, share links and photos, and so on. But where it differs from apps like Facebook is its use of Circles, which allows users to define groups of contacts and then only share specific updates and other information with that group. Circles are effectively easy-to-understand privacy controls. They can be set up via an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, and there doesn???t appear to be any limitations on the number of them you can define.
You could, for instance, have a Circle for all of your work colleagues, a Circle for your team and then also create ad hoc Circles for project teams as required. This ability to easily control who you share specific pieces of information with is powerful, and very useful in the workplace: you may only want to send an update regarding the status or a project to only those colleagues working on that project, for example.
I have been using it too for a week now. And I am switching no doubt. This is Twitter, Yammer and Facebook all in one. Social Media done right. Collaboration, geolocation, co-working, sharing knowledge and information…it’s all there in essence. When Google puts on the extra services they have lying around (Docs, Agenda, Mail, Reader and Search) there is no say it where this might go. Very powerfull stuff!!
Victor Haze 