Online Life

For many years I avoided creating a Facebook account.  I understand the benefits of this service and also see how it can also eat away at free time.  Mostly I felt uncomfortable mixing my professional life with personal life by having my students and colleagues exposed to the same postings as I would potentially share with my family and friends.  I also accepted the fact that I'm not all that social so I really wouldn't have much to share.

This past week I took the plunge into the social networking world and created a Google+ account.  I thought that, through the use of the different circles within Google +, I should be able to compartmentalize my different lives.  I setup my profile and uploaded my picture (the same picture I use for this blog).  I also sent invitations to my family but my daughter (who is under 18) is not able to join yet and she is a little irked by this.  Now I'm not sure what to do next and how much information I want to put into this account and how much time I want to spend on this.

As I was setting up the Google+ account I was thinking if this is different than my LinkedIn account?  It seems I can use my professional circles to cover the same functionality offered through LinkedIn.  If many of my professional contacts join Google+ I think LinkedIn becomes redundant.  Even now, I don't see a lot of value in LinkedIn so I'm not sure how Google+ will make a case for professional networking; hopefully it will offer new services to help foster these professional relationships.

I think Google+ will give Facebook a run for its money but it may also cause disruption in social networking by having two different platforms.  With these two platforms we have to worry about the platform where friends and colleagues reside.  It reminds me of the Mac/PC struggles in the 1980s and 1990s where the platforms caused incompatibilities and forced us to choose one platform or the other.  Perhaps this time we can find ways to interface between the two platforms.

Only time will tell if Google+ can be as successful as Facebook or if it will be another Google experiment like Buzz and Orkut.  I wonder how much time I should invest in building an online life in Google+.  I'll have to evaluate my time investment as I play with this serve a little more.