Google+ versus Facebook – Moving to Google+

I have used Facebook a few years now, but I have never been completely satisfied with this site/software.

First, it is not terribly simple to sort out your “friends” into adequate groups. I have, for example, different groups of people that I  like to keep separate. These groups would include:

• My few religious friends. These are people that I have been close to since I was very young and I am more than happy to have them on my list, but not always happy to share all of my content (posts, links, etc) with them.
• My Free Thinker friends. These are the people that I have befriended since I left religious America so many years ago. These are the people with whom I would share almost anything – including jokes about religious people.
• My work colleagues. These are business professionals in education, online marketing, counselling and a number of different fields in which I have experience and colleagues. I prefer to share business related posts with these people, but to exclude them from some of my more “interesting” jokes, links and other posts.
• My family. I am happy to share all content with this group.
• My students (and former students). With this group, I want to share professional content relevant to their area(s) of study.

Facebook has never been good for channeling content at such refined levels. I tried to create a second account where I discussed more “professional” content, but this never worked terribly well. First, people on my other account began to request to be added, which sort of negated the whole purpose in having the second account. Second, I began to get confused as to which account I was logged into and posting – for example, using my iPhone with the business account and then forgetting and posting things for my family and friends. What a mess!

Google+ resolves this problem with “circles” – a bloody fabulous idea! I can create as many circles as I want and channel content to suit to each group. This is reason enough to change to Google+, in my opinion.

Second, if you have ever advertised with Facebook, you would know that whether or not your campaigns are “successful”, the Facebook team can be tight-fisted and unbending – think, for example, of the FB insistence early on of DAILY payment for adverts and their inadequate ability to deal with many international currencies.

Looking forward to developing my circles in Google+!