Well, everyone has written their initial impressions of Google+ based on the early invites they received, or perhaps on looks at the documentation Google has provided. From a technical side, I’m there isn’t much I can say that hasn’t been said. I did receive and invite late last night, but by the time I received it, I couldn’t login, so I’m still waiting on that.

At work, CHC is part of the Google for Nonprofits program. I asked there if there was anything coming with Google+ for Nonprofits; nothing yet. One friend at Google posted a link to where to sign up for Google for Developers. I signed up there and am waiting for information.

I loaded Google+ on my Android phone and set it up with my Gmail account. Unfortunately, the Android app doesn’t allow for multiple accounts and the invite I received was for my Orient Lodge email account. I tried uninstalling the app, hoping to re-install it and then set it up with my Orient Lodge account. However, it won’t uninstall.

So much for the technology side, let’s think about the how it might change things.

Circles are the most interesting to me. I have over two thousand friends on Facebook and over thirty four hundred followers on Twitter. Both systems, provide for things like lists or groups, but all of my connections were established before groups and lists, and neither have been all that easy to use or move to, so, to borrow from David Weinberger, all of my contacts are miscellaneous.

That said, I really like the ideas of circles, not so much for a privacy reason. If I post something on Facebook or Twitter, I’m assuming anyone will ultimately be able to read it, and it doesn’t matter which circle it goes to. On the other hand, I like the idea of being able to read what people in different circles are saying. Sometimes, I want to read the political stuff. Sometimes, I want to read the local stuff.

There are a lot of different ways I would like to look at circles. I’m interested in Venn or Euler diagrams of my different circles. Sometimes I want to read Politics. Sometimes I want to read Connecticut stuff. Sometimes I want to read the intersection of the two, Connecticut Politics. Likewise, some circles are subsets of other circles. For example, I would like to have a Woodbridge circle and a New Haven circle, maybe even a Bethany circle. Each of these circles would be a subset of a New Haven County circle, and a Third Congressional District circle, which in term would be a subset of a Connecticut circle and a New England circle.

Similar circles about QR Codes, Drupal developers, the old Wave developers group, Maemo developers, etc. would all fit into a technology circle. Progressives, moderates, independents, would all be part of a political circle and there would be some interesting overlaps between Republican and Democratic circles.

With that, I could also imagine doing some interesting intersections of circles like progressive drupal developers in New York.

Now, if other people have interesting circles, I could easily imagine looking at what my progressive friends are saying just to their progressive friends as opposed to what they are saying about the red carpet at the latest awards show. That said, sometimes, I may want to hear what my progressive friends are saying in entertainment circles.

All of this runs into the difficulty memorialized in a Saturday Night Live skit during the early days of digital watches, a watch so complicated it takes four hands to use.

The next issue is social and group dynamics aspects. How does this relate to small groups, large groups, subgroups, and other types of dynamics? This is a topic I really want to explore in more detail, but its time for dinner, so that will wait for another time.

So, what do you think about Google+? Oh, and I added Google’s +1 link to my blog posts as another thing to play with…