Google+ saving us from our own stupidity

Last year around this time, I posted an article in the July 19th Baltimore Examiner urging my readers to be wary of their on-line postings. This article was published due to a series of high profile incidents that revolved around Facebook postings. In truth, it could have been Twitter, or any other social networking site. I was not picking on Facebook.

To recap, one incident involved an Ohio woman who learned of her husband's wedding in Florida through a Facebook posting. Needless to say, she was not the bride, was not invited, nor was she happy. In another case, a New Jersey woman was fired for what she claimed were unflattering Facebook postings about her boss that she posted to her account. The company claimed they had other reasons for the termination, though I am pretty sure her prose on Facebook did not help her cause.

While all this was going on, Google was busying itself with pouring through the myriad of applications it received from its Google for Fiber campaign. It subsequently wired an area of Stanford University as a test run for the above project. Ever the enterprising and cutting edge company, Google also embarked upon a trenching competition that would eventually help them during the actual implementation of their Google for Fiber project.

In the end, Kansas City, Kansas won the right to have Google provide the unprecedented 1Gbps(Gigabyte per second) broadband plant Google offered as a prize. Congrats to them. By the way, I was only kidding with the Examiner article I wrote a few months ago.

What Google did not have, despite its best efforts, was a viable social networking application that people wanted to use. Orkut never did it for me, though I do have an account that I access once every six months. I would access it more often, except I have better things to do than to post to an empty cyber auditorium. Or, after Google reads this, maybe not. Jaiku, Wave, and Buzz, I must confess, I have never heard of until recently.

In short, despite the impressive gains Google has made in most everything it touches over the past few years - most notably producing the Android operating system that is giving both Apple and Microsoft strong competition - it could not make even a tiny scratch in the social networking sector dominated by Facebook and Twitter. All that could change soon, and for a very good reason.

Google+ is the company's latest venture into social networking, and it seems to have something Facebook and Twitter do not; a way to hide your stupidity from the rest of the world. The methodology behind this is what Google calls "Circles."

Circles is a way to categorize different groups you want to share information with. For instance, you can place your family into one circle, while putting your drunken group of college friends in another circle, and your friends from Church in still another circle. This way your parents, family, and church-going friends don't get to see the naked pictures that were taken during last Saturday nights beer and bong blast at one of your school's frat houses, saving all involved from having to answer a lot of embarrassing questions.

Better yet, you can segregate your boss into still another circle. So that when you post, "My dumbass boss is an overbearing dictator with a brain the size of a pea," you can safely hide it from him, and everyone else from work.

The other features of Google+ are useful, but we feel are just fluff compared to Circles. They include "Hangouts" which appears to be a neat little twist of Four Square. You tell friends where you are in the hopes that some will physically show up, and hang out with you.

Sparks is a way for Google to send information that interest you automatically to your smartphone. Instant Upload takes the hassle out of uploading photos and videos from your phone, while Huddle is getting a group of friends together using chat. Think of teleconferencing using text messaging.

Whether Google+ has enough appeal to challenge the two major social networks remains to be seen. It does appear to do one thing well however. Saving us from our own stupidity.