Adopting Google+

A couple of years ago, my college adopted the Google suite of applications and email to replace our legacy email system.  As part of this adoption our system administrator is able to grant us access to many of the Google products.  Last month, we gained access to Google+.

Some time last year, before the college rolled-out Google+, I created my own personal Google+ account to see what all of the fuss was about.  After setting up my account I didn't really see how I could justify spending time within this new social application.  Now that I have access to Google+ through the college I thought I would create an account and, perhaps, a new use for this service would emerge.

After a couple of weeks with the new Google+ account, I added several friends, family, and colleagues to my circles and followed (is that the right term?; it seems like I'm a stalker) a few prominent IT personalities to view their streams.  Since setting this up I posted a message, +1 a few postings, and noticed myself begin added to the circles of other people.  However, nothing earth shattering has occurred yet.  I don't know what I'm expecting but I hope there will be more to Google+ than this.

I'm hopeful Google+ will serve as a way to stay connected to my colleagues, alumni, and friends.  I like the idea of circles since the separation of my professional life and academic life was one of the reasons I stayed away from Facebook.  I hope Google+ offers more interaction and relevance than offered by LinkedIn but I'm not sure where this will go.  I think the adoption rate and participation rate of Google+ will be the strongest indicators of how much benefit this will serve.